The Cabinet on Friday approved a white paper to boost the nation's rural tourism sector as it aims to increase overseas visitor numbers to 40 million by 2020.
The white paper on tourism said global travel was estimated to grow to 1.8 billion tourists a year by 2030 from 1.18 billion in 2015 against the backdrop of economic growth in Asia.
But while taking advantage of the trend to boost overall visitors, the government hopes to increase regional tourism to offset the over-concentration of tourists in big cities.
The government views tourism as an engine to realize its target of raising nominal gross domestic product to ¥600 trillion and sees room for growth as the tourism sector's contribution to GDP at 7.5 percent is low compared with major Western countries.
Cultural assets and natural parks that have been targeted for preservation should be better utilized and steps taken to beautify towns, following similar measures in France and Spain, the white paper said.
Spain is known for accepting overnight guests at old castles and monasteries, while France promotes villages with beautiful scenery.
To encourage more foreign visitors to travel to rural areas, the white paper also called for creating multilingual websites and securing Chinese and Korean interpreters in addition to English interpreters.
The national average occupancy rate for ryokan (Japanese-style inns) was 38 percent in 2015 but lower in rural areas, although a hotel shortage is becoming a serious issue in big cities.