Nearly one-fifth fewer people took hotel rooms in northeastern Japan in 2012 than in 2010, although tourism in other areas showed a strong recovery, government figures show.
Nearly one-fifth fewer people took hotel rooms in northeastern Japan in 2012 than in 2010, although tourism in other areas showed a strong recovery, government figures show.
The Japan Tourism Agency released data on March 8 showing continued depression in the numbers of overnighters in the six prefectures of the Tohoku region, the part of Japan that was worst hit by the 2011 quake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, but which also contains large areas that were unaffected.
It estimated that 17,080,000 people took rooms in tourist hotels and traditional Japanese-style inns in Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata and Fukushima prefectures in 2012, down 19 percent from 2010 and down 5.9 percent from 2011, the year the disaster struck.
Figures for 2011 may be skewed because many people who fled their homes booked into whatever commercial accommodation was available.
Overall, Fukushima and Akita prefectures saw the largest decline in visitors, respectively at 25.6 percent and 45.6 percent. Akita Prefecture is on the Sea of Japan coast, not the Pacific side where the tsunami struck.
Iwate Prefecture saw recovery to the pre-disaster levels, with a drop of only 0.2 percent.
In Japan as a whole, 212,850,000 people spent at least one night in the 32,000 hotels and inns where more than half of the overnighters were tourists. That was down only 1.6 percent from 2010.
Tourism industry officials say Tohoku suffers from perceptions that the entire region is either crippled or contaminated with radioactive fallout from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant accident.
"People think of 'Tohoku' prefectures as one and the same. Recovery will be very difficult," said an official at the Japan Travel and Tourism Association.
Other officials cited the example of schools shying away from choosing Tohoku as a destination for student study trips.
"Some schools have canceled plans and opted to conduct field trips in other locations instead, sending pupils to places like Kyoto. This is in anticipation of opposition by parents," one industry official said.
Nippon Travel Agency Co., one of the largest in Japan, said the number of school trips and corporate tours to Tohoku it arranged in 2012 were down by about 15 percent from 2010.
The number of foreign tourists to the six Tohoku prefectures in 2012 was down nearly 70 percent from 2010.
But this is comparatively less significant than the figures for domestic visitors because foreigners accounted for only 0.6 percent of all overnight visitors in 2012, down from 1.6 percent in 2010.