Japan’s Tourism during the Lunar New Year was affected by troubled relationships with China.
Hotels in Osaka’s busy Dotonbori area experienced low occupancy on average for the entire time over New Year’s with a number of hotels experiencing occupancy of just 76% through late February (very low for this time of year). Because hotel prices in Osaka were down as well, the number of people who stayed in hotels during this time would have meant a considerable drop in hotel revenues when they should have been up considerably.
In November 2021, Japan’s PM Sanae Takaichi made comments regarding a possible future crisis in Taiwan and since then the Chinese Government has consistently warned its citizens to re-think travel to Japan. This attitude created a domino effect, especially during the busy Lunar New Year period, which is the busiest travel period of the year in Asia.
Tripla, a hotel reservation platform, noted that cancellations of hotel reservations made in China for the Lunar New Year period reached 53.6%. This means that over half of the reservations made in China during the whole period will never be filled.
According to Cirium, which is a firm that analyzes flight data, flights from the mainland China to Japan during the New Year period were down over 31% from the previous year and available seating was down by more than 26%.
In January 2023, flights to/from China dropped by approximately 60%, indicating a strong decline from the previous year for the month at Kansai International Airport. Likewise, the number of passengers on Chinese flights at Narita International Airport was roughly 18% lower than it was last December, with an even larger decline (approximately 27%) between late December and early January.
In the year 2025, Chinese tourists were estimated to have made up approximately 21% of the total number of foreign visitors to Japan, while they were also responsible for an estimated 20% of the total value of travel to Japan (the highest percentage for any international market) — this is no small amount of money to be used in support of inbound tourism.
According to data provided by Japan National Tourism Organization, approximately 330,000 Chinese tourists arrived in Japan during December 2020, representing a decline of approximately 45% from the previous year. By contrast, during this same time period, six major Southeast Asian countries (Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam) combined sent passengers to Japan that exceeded 650,000; thus demonstrating that this particular region was growing.
One of the main tourist markets has been experiencing some serious declines, but other tourist markets have come to fill this void.
Takayuki Miyajima, a senior economist at Sony Financial Group, believes that the number of visitors from China is likely to decrease through the first six months of 2026. If so, Japan’s tourism industry will be reorganized to become less reliant on one main source of customers and to develop a wider variety of customers from different markets around the globe.
The diplomatic problems between China and Japan have turned into measurable impacts to the tourism market in Japan, such as vacant hotels, fewer flights, and declining room prices. However, these events will likely cause Japan to seek broader and more balanced sales from the international tourism market.
Therefore, while this Lunar New Year seems quieter at many hotel lobbies than last year, it could also signal a change in Japan’s long-term inbound tourism plan.
