TOKYO – Around 5,500 foreign travelers from the Philippines have touched down in Japan in 2021.
The preliminary data published by the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) on Jan. 19 revealed that the number of visitors from the Philippines fell by 99.1 percent last year compared to two years earlier.
“We compared visitor arrivals figures for 2021 to those for 2019 to get rid of the effect of COVID-19,” the JNTO stated.
Based on the same data, Japan welcomed 245,900 foreign travelers in 2021, the lowest since 1964, down 99.2 percent from the previous two years.
Visitors from China accounted for the largest number of arrivals at 42,300. Vietnam was second with 26,500, followed by the United States with 20,000.
Japan’s border controls were tightened in November last year in an attempt to prevent the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in the country. - Florenda Corpuz
(Article cover photo: A man walks past an arrivals board at Tokyo's Haneda airport on Jan. 9, 2022. Din Eugenio)
