No news, or at best, lame news. Biometric filtering does not affect tourism. Rights groups and business leaders have had worlds apart concerns about the consequences of the overzealous move of the Japanese administration but they come bundled in this short article. Rights groups have been concerned with the meaning of it. Meaning does not mean anything to the others, unless it affects ROI. Fingerprinting is economically speaking a harmless practice. Any other point of view is irrelevant. Nothing new.
Fingerprinting Harmless To Tourism In Japan: Government -AFP
TOKYO (AFP)--Japan's new practice of fingerprinting and photographing foreigners hasn't discouraged tourism, with last year seeing a record number of visitors, a government survey said Friday.
Japan started the new security measures at airports and other points of entry despite concerns by rights groups and business leaders.
Japan modeled the tighter immigration controls on the controversial U.S.-Visit system launched in the U.S. after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, which keeps biometric data of foreign visitors.
However, the number of foreigners entering Japan between Nov. 20, the day the new controls were introduced, and Dec. 31, rose 13.4% from the same period of 2006 to 980,000, the justice ministry said.
The total number of foreigners who visited Japan last year hit a record 9.15 million, up 12.9% from the previous year, the ministry said in a preliminary survey.
"One factor is thought to be the effects of government policies to promote tourism in Japan," it said, noting a particular growth in visitors from other Asian countries.
Japan has been promoting a "Visit Japan" campaign to double the annual total of visitors to 10 million by 2010 from 5.21 million in 2003.
The campaign includes advertisements overseas and more foreign-language assistance in Japan.
A separate survey by Japan's largest travel agency said last month that a record nine million foreigners are expected to visit Japan next year, drawn both by the country's culture and the upcoming Group of Eight summit.
Tourism to Japan has also been boosted by the recent weakness of the yen, particularly in comparison with the soaring South Korean won and euro.
2 comments:
Well, my Japanese husband just said yesterday that nothing goes well in Japan except for the few things that can be counted - monetary things, "visible" economy, is what he meant.
Considering that the period mentioned was Christmas season, and pre-CHristmas-sale season, nothing definitive can acutally be said about the numbers!
They also were in a hurry to say that 5 people were caught after the introduction of the fingerpriniting - a day or two after it started - but we do not hear about any further "success" , and this article is also the very first preliminary result, but nothing can be said long-term yet, not that I'm optimistic though.
Interesting they report this as harmless- how many of those visitors knew they were going to get fingerprinted when they purchased the plane tickets? I'd bet less than half -Japan's tourism campaign didn't exactly include that fact in to my knowledge.
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