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Foreign visitors may have been motivated to book return trips to Japan, and that could have resulted in future tourist spending of more than $90 billion.

15 Comments

Kiuchi Takahide, an economist at Nomura Research Institute, saying that the ban on spectators at most Tokyo Olympic venues means a loss of both ticket revenue and a "legacy impact" from foreign tourists coming for the Games.

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15 Comments
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Takahide is right. Had they just postponed these Games for another year they would have reaped the windfall he mentions.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

A lot of woulda, coulda, shoulda. Too late now. But there sure will be a legacy.

15 ( +15 / -0 )

That tourism issue is just only virus related, I think. Someone wrote me in a mail of being long time quite interested to visit Japan and hopefully possible in autumn if having the money and the virus infections should be low. Not a single word of Olympics or repeating etc., just only postponed touristic interest. Bring the numbers down, and everything’s fine.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

@Reckless: Yes they will. In their droves. There won't be enough seats on planes in 18 months.

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

I'm booked to go to Japan in April next year... god knows if Japan'll be open by then... I hope I won't have to change the tickets for a fifth time in two years lol

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

speed and ginitonic are the same person? :-)

1 ( +1 / -0 )

@Thunderbird2 - I've visited Japan six times since 2011, and I miss it. But I wouldn't book a thing until the Japanese government removes all COVID barriers. And I hope you don't have to pay for each change of your tickets. That would hurt. I hope you can get there in time for next year's cherry blossom 'season', but I wouldn't hold your breath.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

600,000 visitors were expected

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-20/tokyo-olympics-to-bar-overseas-spectators-from-postponed-games

I'll ignore the "more than", but "$90 billion" divided by 600,000 is........$150,000

So the assumption here is that every single Olympic visitor would have come back to Japan and spent 16.5 million yen each, the price of a small house. According to MLIT's data, the average inbound tourist spend is 170,000 yen (about $1500) for Americans, so the Olympics would have to motivate them to come 100 times each.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

I've visited Japan six times since 2011, and I miss it. But I wouldn't book a thing until the Japanese government removes all COVID barriers. And I hope you don't have to pay for each change of your tickets. That would hurt. I hope you can get there in time for next year's cherry blossom 'season', but I wouldn't hold your breath.

I've been going every year or so since 2007... but last time was 2018 - I can wait a bit longer if I have to. Luckily KLM let me change my tickets for free :)

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I take the bet for 2023

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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