Japanese Love Affair with Australia Seems Over

Queensland’s Sunday Mail reported over the weekend that the number of Japanese tourists heading to Australia has hit an all-time low, placing the lucrative $2.2 billion market in jeopardy, with New South Wales particularly badly hit, with a 30% fall over the past five years.

Tourism NSW said the Japanese market was bored with koalas and Sydney Harbour, so was turning to Europe, the US, and destinations closer to home such as China.

“They don’t find Australia attractive any more,” Japan’s largest tour company JALPAK said and the accelerating decline is set to worsen with JAL rumoured to be considering stopping flights to Australia.

In another blow, Tourism Australia’s $21 million advertising campaign “Where the bloody hell are you?” has failed in Asia because they don’t understand it, although it was modified for the polite Asian market to “So, why don’t you come?” but industry leaders say the Japanese do not get the humour in the translation.

In an effort to win back the market, Tourism Minister Fran Bailey sent an Action Plan Group to Japan this week to meet with government and travel industry leaders but Tourism and Transport Forum CEO Chris Brown said more was needed, calling on the New South Wales government for urgent funding and accusing the tourism industry of being “fat, lazy and complacent”.

He added, “New South Wales’ position is becoming more and more dire and we have allowed Australia’s position to slip in the most lucrative market on earth, Japan.”  “New South Wales is the least-funded state in Australia for tourism”.

Through the ’90s Japan was Australia’s leading inbound tourism market, peaking at a record 814,000 visitors in 1997, but since then it has been in decline, hitting 686,000 last year and it is worse in New South Wales as Japanese visitors abandon Sydney for cities closer to home.

The latest Tourism Research Australia figures show that Japanese tourists to New South Wales have fallen by over 30% over the past five years to 259,119 and numbers were tipped to fall another 9% by 2014.

Starwood Hotels director of Asian Global Leisure Sales, Bob Lunnon, said expensive flights and poor marketing had contributed to the sharp decline and that Japanese were no longer satisfied with the classic Sydney attractions.

He added, “They want an activity-based holiday, which is why the BridgeClimb has proved so successful, but we need to be developing more tourist attractions, be they natural or man-made, in Australia.” 

Tourism New South Wales spokeswoman Natalie Soltyszewski said, “Cute animals and nature were no longer attractions for the valuable Japanese tourism market and many of them have done Sydney and it’s up to us to give them new experiences”. 

JALPAK’s director Kazuyo McDonald said Japanese tourists were opting for short-haul destinations such as China and Thailand. “We are very worried,” she said, calling on the airlines for more support and saying that the price of flights continues to increase due to fuel prices and new taxes and they are forecast to go higher if Qantas becomes the sole carrier.

Report by The Mole