By Shingo Sugime

8:00 JST, March 29, 2025

The number of visitors to Japan in 2024 was 36.87 million, nearly 5 million more than the 31.88 million who visited in 2019. Spending by tourists also reached a record high of ¥8.1 trillion, up from ¥4.8 trillion in 2019. While the strong performance of the tourism sector is clear, issues that have existed since before the pandemic, such as over-tourism at popular destinations and sluggish growth in visitor numbers in regional areas, are becoming more acute.

How can these problems be resolved? One clue is the term “high-value guests,” which refers to travelers who spend more than ¥1 million per visit to Japan.

According to the Japan National Tourism Organization, 287,000 high-value guests from six countries (Australia, China, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States) visited Japan in 2019, spending ¥552.3 billion. Although such high-value visitors account for fewer than........

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