Foreign tourists packing flights to Japan are helping the economy climb out of a recession with spending power that is also fueling upward pressure on hospitality-sector pay and prices.
Almost 2 million visitors arrived from overseas in April, compared with less than 140,000 a year earlier, according to Japan’s National Tourism Organization.
While that’s still far from pre-pandemic levels of almost 3 million per month, the return of spending by foreign tourists has already accounted for 1.1 percentage point of the 1.6% annualized growth in the first three months of this year, according to Bloomberg Economics.