China's ban on all outbound group travel to stop the deadly coronavirus from spreading comes as a blow to Japan's retail and tourism sectors, which had been counting on robust spending by Chinese visitors during the Lunar New Year holidays.
"We may see an impact on our sales, as 80 percent of visiting foreign customers at our flagship Hankyu department store in Osaka are Chinese," an official of operator H2O Retailing Corp. said of the group travel ban imposed Monday.
Sales at department stores in Japan slumped in 2019, falling 1.4 percent from the previous year on a same-store basis for the second straight year, with the drop blamed on bad summer weather and a warm winter.