The entrance gate to the normally crowded Kiyomizu temple, a favourite location among tourists, is pictured amid the coronavirus disease outbreak, in Kyoto, Japan. Picture taken on July 21, 2020TOKYO - Japan's easing of a two-year ban on foreign tourists seeks to balance the enormous economic importance of tourism with concerns that travellers would trigger a Covid outbreak, insiders say.
"There were worries that foreign tourists would include a lot of people with bad manners - people who don't wear masks or don't use hand sanitiser and that infections could spread again," said one tourism company executive, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
"If the government doesn't open up the country, more companies will go bankrupt, and that's no good politically," he said. Japan, where guidelines such as mask-wearing and hand sanitising are scrupulously followed, has avoided the kind of massive infections that have swept through other countries. The number of hotels that shut down nationwide rose to the highest in five years last year, and hotel debt levels have more than doubled since 2019, according to researcher Teikoku Databank Ltd.
The rickshaw pullers in Tokyo's Asakusa temple district have gotten by giving rides to domestic tourists instead of the throngs of Chinese who used to come."I want the foreigners to return," said Yui Oikawa of Rise Up Tokyo Rickshaw. "It was more lively that way, with people from all over coming to Asakusa to pray or have a drink."
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