Can tourism become a force for economic growth? The Japanese government hopes so, making tourism, including medical tourism, one pillar of its new growth strategy adopted last summer.
On March 8, plans were announced for raising the share of tourism-related revenues in Japan's GDP from 2 percent in 2009 to between 3 and 3.9 percent by 2016. By comparison, Austria had a "tourism GDP" of 5.4 percent in 2007; New Zealand, 4.1 percent (2008); France, 3.7 percent (2007); and Britain, 3.4 percent (2007).
On Jan. 26, the Japan Tourism Agency set a target of 11 million inbound visitors in 2011, after missing its goal of 10 million for 2010. According to the Japan National Tourist Organization, a record 8.61 million foreign tourists came to Japan last year, largely from other Asian countries. The largest number came from South Korea — 2.43 million (an increase of 53.8 percent over the previous year) — followed by China at 1.41 million (up 40.5 percent) and Taiwan at 1.26 million (up 23.8 percent). The number of U.S. tourists rose 3.9 percent to 720,000; 180,000 tourists came from Britain, and 150,000 from France.