Japan expects a record tourist flow from Russia in 2018

“The Russian tourist flow to Japan in 2018 may exceed the record indicator of 2017”, - said Airi Motokura, the Head of Moscow office of Japanese National Tourist Organization (JNTO). She connects such dynamics of Russian arrivals to Japan with the facilitation of visa regime in 2017, as well as the opening of new flights and increasing frequencies from Irkutsk, Novosibirsk and Vladivostok. In addition, more and more tour operators, including federal ones, are beginning to offer tours to Japan. Mrs. Airi Motokura said that according to the optimistic scenario of JNTO, the Russian tourist flow to Japan may amount about 95 thousand people as a result of 2018. "If earlier mainly narrowly specialized companies worked with a Japanese product, today major tour operators, as well as those travel agencies which work earlier with Chinese and Asian products, actively offer our product", - she added. Mrs. Motokura stressed once again that in 2017, 77.2 thousand Russians visited Japan, which is 40% more than the result of 2016. “This year we see even better growth. For 7 months of 2018, 54.2 thousand Russians visited Japan, which is 29% more than in the same period of 2017. According to the dynamics of the tourist flow, Russia is a leader of the Japanese incoming market. We hope that this rate of growth of Russian arrivals will continue until the end of the year", - the representative of JNTO emphasized. According to her, while maintaining the current growth dynamics, in 2019 the tourist flow from Russian Federation will exceed the mark of 100 thousand tourists. According to Mrs. Motokura, the constraining factor of the growth of the tourist flow from Russia to Japan is logistics from the regions of Central and the North-West Russia. Today you can depart to the cities of Japan from the European part of Russia only from Moscow by JAL and Aeroflot flights.