Japanese tourism rebound projected

Advertiser Staff and News services

The number of Japanese traveling overseas this year is expected to increase over last year and could bounce back completely in Hawai'i by spring or summer, according to JTB Corp., Japan's largest travel wholesaler.

But JTB forecasts that 16.6 million Japanese will travel this year, representing 102 percent of last year's business.

In December, Japanese visitors to Hawai'i represented a disappointing 50 to 60 percent compared to the previous year, the Hawai'i Visitors & Convention Bureau said Tuesday.

But by spring or summer, "the market will change drastically," said Takashi Sugi, JTB's general manager in Hawai'i. "The future will be quite bright from April, I think, and in summer we hope completely to recover."

The HVCB projects a 90 to 95 percent recovery in the Japanese market in the second and third quarters of 2002. By the end of the summer, Sugi said, the level of Japanese tourists could be more than 100 percent of last year.

The projected rebound is based on a combination of heavy marketing and increasing Japanese confidence as distance grows between the Sept. 11 attacks, Sugi said.

Japan Airlines Co., Asia's largest carrier, meanwhile, said yesterday that it plans to add flights to destinations in Asia to make up for a reduction in flights to Hawai'i and the Mainland.

The airline will fly 21 times a week from airports in Japan to Honolulu until the end of March, compared with 37 originally planned for the month. A halt in flights to some U.S. West Coast destinations, including Las Vegas and San Francisco, will be extended to April 1, it said.

The carrier also will add new flights to routes between Tokyo and South Korean cities, Shanghai and Hanoi, Vietnam. Some of the extra flights will take advantage of a 20 percent increase in landing slots allocated to the carrier at Tokyo's Narita airport when a new runway opens in April.