Discuss about the International Tourism System for Visitation to Tokyo.
This specific case study provides an overview on the international tourism system of Tokyo (Japan). Tokyo is Japan’s capital city and has been one of the most famous tourism locations in Japan. Tokyo is known as a metropolitan prefecture that combines element of both city as well as a prefecture. The culture of Tokyo highlights that it has been famous because of several theatres, festivals, museums. This location has been considered as a modern city owing to its attractive infrastructure. This study elucidates about the elements that make this destination attractive to tourists. The main issue relating to Tokyo as a tourism destination is also identified and analyzed in this study. Furthermore, both positive as well as negative effects of tourism activity on the host community are also discussed in this case study.
It has been evident from recent studies that tourist visitation to Tokyo has increased by huge number for the past few years. Several tourist activities in this location help in attracting large number of international tourists towards this location. (The Japan Times 2018) This destination has been offering huge variety of experiences to the tourists across the globe that ranges from urban life to nature experiences. This city has a mix of traditional as well as ultramodern tourist attractions that ranges from neon – lit skyscrapers to the historic temples. This contributes to reputation of the city as one of the famous tourist destinations, which in turn increases tourist visitation of this place. In addition to this, the city’s urban landscape, natural beauty, unique culture and transportation infrastructure are significant in attracting ourissts to this popular scale. (The Japan Times 2018). The five main attractions in this destination for which the tourists visit this place are its- Temple and Shrines, Gardens and parks, Zoological Gardens, different events, festivals and museums. According to the recent statistics of JNTO (Japan National Tourism Organization), the total number of international tourist growth rate had reached its highest peak in the year 2012 by near about 36% in which domestic tourists increased by about 10%. Based on the data of Euromonitor International, this city has been attracting near around 51% of international tourists in the recent years, which is quite low as compared to previous years. It has been stated by Euromonitor that this rising trend of foreign tourists to this city is mainly contributed through a rise in low- cost flights and relaxations of visa.
The metropolitan government of this city has recently published information that reflects that most visited spots are mainly situated in central Tokyo area. The tourists mainly arrive in this city to visit various attractions such as -museums, art galleries and for business purposes. According to recent statistics revealed by the Metropolitan Government of this nation indicates that in the year 2017, near about 88% of the tourists arrived in this city mainly for the purpose of sightseeing. Besides this, the total number of tourists visiting this city for the purpose of business has been higher than that of other nations such as Germany, Vietnam and so on. It has been evident from the above study that, the international tourist visitation in this location has been higher than that of the domestic tourist visitation. Overall, it can be said that tourist visitation in this location increased over the last few years.
There are several elements that make this destination attractive to tourists, which mainly involve their tourism system. The tourism administration of this city is the comprehensive administration, which supports the whole tourism industry. The local government of this nation adopts several policies in the tourism industry in order to improve their tourism system. These policies include- promotion of this city’s images through various advertising mediums and paper mediums as well as holding domestic events such as fairs, festivals and projections. They also support their tourism industry in promotion of different activities such as attraction of travel agencies, training camps, conventions. Furthermore, they also make public private cooperation in order to establish institutions as well as adopt tourism policies in a flexible way. In addition to this, the local governments also invest huge amount of money for supporting particular businesses relating to the tourism systems. This in turn motivates the people involved in the business and thus improves the whole tourism administration of this city.
Recent evidences reflect that this city has increased the hotel accommodation supply over the last few years. During the past two years, new hotels have been opened across the central region of this city. Moreover, this expansion has been partly contributed by huge expansion of hotel development including resorts, APA hotels. Based on the recent statistics, it has been seen that the hotel occupancy rate increased at a higher rate during the last two years. However, such development in the tourism system of this destination attracts large number of domestic as well as international tourists.
This destination has been facing several issues relating to tourism even though it experiences huge growth over the last few years. One of the major issues that this destination has been experiencing is the lack of multiculturalism. As this location has less number of foreign residents, it features the slowest growth in attaining multiculturalism in comparison with other global cities (Charlesworth 2017). As a result, this affects the tourism sector since this city’s service providers and retailers have been struggling to serve international tourists in English as well as other foreign languages. Therefore, recruitment of appropriate employees who are more conversant in foreign language remains an issue for tourism service providers in Tokyo.
Another major issue is Tokyo has been still facing the lack of accommodations as total number of tourists continues to rise (Dennis, McCornac and Rong Zhang 2018). Although this destination has developed their tourism system and increased the hotel accommodation supply, this becomes a huge challenge over the past few years. Recent studies reflect that huge number of tourists has begun to degrade experience from visiting this city due to this accommodation problem. This in turn creates several problems for the service providers relating to the tourism system.
Apart from these issues, another issue that this city has been facing despite huge economic growth is urban planning, design and environment (Darbellay and Stock 2012). It has been evident from few studies that there has been significant growth in several areas of this city including- livability, accessibility, economy and others. Despite such strong urban as well as economic development, this city has been meeting with several issues such as high population density and so on. Huge population density of this city creates problems of housing crisis. This in turn puts huge pressure on the public housing system. In addition to this, supply of water is another issue that occurs in this city due to rising demand of the population. However, the tourists visiting this city face numerous issues due to lack of water and housing supply. High population density of Tokyo also creates issues on safety of areas and prices of properties in this city. Due to such increased property prices, the local government faces several challenges regarding development of the tourism system.
Despite the presence of tourism assets in this city, the information about them as well as their appeal is not communicated to the tourist (Limited 2018). However, this less awareness mainly contributes to imbalance of visitor portfolio and skewed tourist regional distribution. There are three basic issues underlying the low awareness of this city’s tourism assets. These includes- lack of international perspective in companies that manage tourism marketing, absence of platform for capturing praise, requirement of developing a platform for managing repeat visitors.
All the promotional strategies relating to tourism are not always effective. However, the service model becomes limited and this causes problem for the service providers relating to tourism. In addition to this, one of the basic problems underlying here include the dearth of the service model in this city and the lack of resources as well as capabilities. However, the cooperation between private and public sectors in several arenas – for instance, aggregating all tourist information and providing end- to- end experience is limited. No clear organization has taken a lead to prepare for as well as accelerate inbound demand. There are some cases, which reflect that inbound tourism has been a less priority in comparison to outbound or domestic demand. This in turn creates several problems for this city owing to less capabilities or infrastructure for accommodating the tourists. Additionally, few evidences reflect that this destination has been facing huge problem in meeting the requirements of international as well as domestic tourist with its diverse cultural backgrounds.
As this nation has a mono- ethic as well as monolingual economy that place huge priority on cultural identity, there arises a propensity to reject those people from varied cultures. However, these prejudices adversely affect tourism system in this destination. The tourists with varied linguistic as well as cultural backgrounds usually show divergence in their attitudes, which in turn creates several problems for the service providers related to tourism.
Overall, the reasons for which this destination has been unpopular are given below-
Tourism activities have positive as well as negative impacts on the host community in Tokyo. These effects are explained below:
Tourism activities influence the economy at local as well as regional levels both positively and negatively. Tourism activities can benefit the host communities by creating job opportunities and improve standards of living. On the contrary, the amount of fund generated from these tourism activities might adversely affect the host community of the city.
Tourism in this location creates several jobs via direct as well as indirect employment in retail and the transportation industry. The tourism activity also provides huge opportunities for small- scale enterprises operating in this city, which in turn leads to generation of additional tax revenues. The local government uses this revenue for the development of schools, hospitals and so on.
The jobs created by tourism are generally poorly paid as well as seasonal. In addition to this, the tourism activities in this destination also increases price of goods and services and local properties. Therefore, the total amount of funds that is generated from the tourism activities might not eventually benefit host community as it goes to biggest multinational corporations. Apart from this, natural calamities and economic recession that impacts this nation also adversely impacts on its tourism activities. However, the cost relating to tourism activities are generally borne by the government, which in turn leads to huge tax revenues.
Zae and Zaei (2013) cites that an attractive environment usually appeals the tourist and provides stimulus for travelling. It has been found out by some researchers that tourism activities not only impact the environment of the host community positively but also impact it negatively.
The tourism activities mainly ecotourism assists in promotion of natural resource conservation, which includes- rain forests, wildlife preservation since they are taken into account as assets of tourism. In addition to this, it also facilitates in funds generation for maintenance of animal reserves and parks by means of entrance charges and guiding fees. By creation of other employment sources, issues such as over-fishing, deforestation might be decreased by tourism activities.
It has been opined by Zaei and Zaei (2013) that, tourism activities in this city poses a threat to the cultural as well as natural resources of this destination such as coral reefs, water supply, heritage sites owing to overuse. In fact, the pollution level in the city might also increase owing to increased sewage production, traffic emission and so on.
Tourism might have several impacts on cultural as well as social aspects of people’s life in a specific region. The communication between host community and tourists might impact the community if the tourist is not sensitive to traditions and local customs. The positive and negative impacts are explained below:
Tourism activities results in improvement of infrastructure along with leisure amenities, which in turn benefits the host communities. It also motivates traditional festivals, handicrafts, and customs to be preserved as well as leads to creation of pride. In addition to this, better understanding of culture might be created through interactions of host as well as guest, raises awareness of several problems that are related to poverty, human rights on the global scale.
The behavior and attitude of tourists visiting this destination detrimentally impact the quality of host community’s life. Recent evidences reflect that crowding as well as congestion, rise in crime, issues of drug have taken place in this city due to arrival of varied culture tourists. The tourism activities also results in infringement of human rights along with displacement of local people from their own land in order to construct new hotels for accommodating increasing number of tourists. Even the traditional cultures and values of this host community are also eroded owing to interactions with the tourist (Williams 2017).
Recent facts highlight that the total number of tourists to Tokyo has been growing over the past few years. Tokyo lacks the sustainable tourism policy and hence it must be formulated and adopted by the government (Mitani 2008). The four policy implications that the government should adopt to achieve sustainable tourism outcomes for this location are explained below:
References
Andonian, A., Kuwabara, T., Yamakawa, N. and Ishida, R., (2016). The future of Japan’s tourism: path for sustainable growth towards 2020. McKinsey Japan and Travel, Transport and Logistics Practice, October, available at: www. mckinsey. com/global-locations/asia/japan/en (accessed May 16, 2018).
Bachrach, Y., Ceppi, S., Kash, I.A., Key, P., Radlinski, F., Porat, E., Armstrong, M. and Sharma, V., 2014, May. Building a personalized tourist attraction recommender system using crowdsourcing. In Proceedings of the 2014 international conference on Autonomous agents and multi-agent systems(pp. 1631-1632). International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.
Charlesworth, S., 2017. Cultural Tourism in Japan: A Critical Analysis of Tourists Perceptions of Marketing and Promotional Material for Japanese Cultural Tourism.
Darbellay, F. and Stock, M., 2012. Tourism as complex interdisciplinary research object. Annals of Tourism Research, 39(1), pp.441-458.
Dennis C. McCornac and Rong Zhang, T. (2018). Japan’s International Tourism Challenge. [online] The Diplomat. Available at: https://thediplomat.com/2014/10/japans-international-tourism-challenge/ [Accessed 16 May 2018].
Guichard-Anguis, S. and Moon, O. eds., 2008. Japanese tourism and travel culture. Routledge.
Limited, F. (2018). Overcoming Tokyo’s Peak Tourism Problem – Fast Train Limited. [online] Fast Train Limited. Available at: https://fasttrainltd.com/inbound/breaking-tokyo-peak-tourism/ [Accessed 16 May 2018].
Mitani, S., 2008. Green tourism, environmentally sound rural tourism in Japan: Recommendations for improvement of Japanese green tourism practices.
The Japan Times. (2018). Attracting more tourists to Japan | The Japan Times. [online] Available at: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/01/06/editorials/attracting-more-tourists-to-japan/#.Wvq4VohubIV [Accessed 16 May 2018].
The Japan Times. (2018). Increasing inbound tourism | The Japan Times. [online] Available at: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2018/01/16/editorials/increasing-inbound-tourism/#.WvxegohubIU [Accessed 16 May 2018].
The Japan Times. (2018). Number of foreign visitors to Japan tops 20 million mark for first time | The Japan Times. [online] Available at: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/01/10/national/number-foreign-visitors-japan-tops-20-million-mark-first-time/#.Wvxc7YhubIU [Accessed 16 May 2018].
Williams, D., 2017. Tokyo (2020): a legacy or lethargy for tourism?, West Metropolitan International University. 25(6), pp.51-66.
Zaei, M.E. and Zaei, M.E., 2013. The impacts of tourism industry on host community. European journal of tourism hospitality and research, 1(2), pp.12-21.
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