Last Updated: May 12, 2024

The Awareness Problem

On Combating Overtourism in Japan

This story was originally published on donnykimball.com and has been syndicated here on Medium.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve likely heard about Japan’s ongoing struggles with overtourism. Spurred on by favorable exchange rates and an ever-growing popularity, Japan is being besieged by legions of international visitors. While these tourism yennies are indeed a great boon for the economy, it’s not without its downsides. More and more, Japan’s mainstays like Kyoto are becoming so crowded that they’ve lost any and all remaining appeal. What’s more, the poor behavior of visitors trying to get their shots for the Gram has only further exacerbated tensions.

Recently, the powers that be have started to wake up to the problem that they created for themselves. Prior to the pandemic, Japan had its eyes set on the target of 40 million tourists. Alas, by setting their KPI as a body count and not a revenue target, the government created an environment that was optimizing for quantity at the expense of quality. Now, seeing the error of their ways, Japan’s bigwigs are instead trying to go after the luxury travel market, a demographic which they’ve arbitrarily set as tourists who spend over one million yen during their time here.

All things considered, I think it’s a good step in the right direction, at least when compared…