A couple months ago, Japan announced that they would be giving away 10,000 free flights to foreigners in hopes of generating interest and increasing visitor numbers in their country. This strategy was due to the fact that their visitor figures were down substantially from the previous years. After the 'earthquake-tsunami-nuclear' meltdown, the summer tourism was catastrophic. The figures showed that the visitor numbers were down by 30% in July and August.
However, just this past week, Japan announced that "... it is with regret that the Japanese Government announced the budget for this proposal has been declined, so the flight give away will not be going ahead.”
The reason the Japanese withdrew this giveaway was because this proposal was going to be expensive. In addition, there were concerns of what the people would think if “…the Japanese Government to give people free flights to Japan when the cities, towns and villages devastated by the tsunami are still in desperate need of funding for reconstruction". Another major reason the proposal was rejected was because the Japanese “would not want people thinking that the generous donations given from around the world to aide those affected by the disaster was being spent on giving people free flights”.
Though Japan is still recovering from their tragic events, Transfer America hopes that they will be able to increase their tourism levels. Japan is a beautiful country and hopefully things will start turning up.
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