Japan quake to hit tourist inflow

The recent tsunami and earthquake in Japan is likely to hit the tourism industry in Orissa. Around 3500 Japanese tourists visit the state, particularly the Buddhist sites, every year.

The flow of tourists from Japan to the state has stopped after the natural disaster hit the country two weeks back, said J K Mohanty, president of Hotel and Restaurants' Association of Orissa (HRAO).

The inflow of Japanese tourists to the state is likely to be affected over the next two to three years, he said.

Since the flow of Japanese tourists to the state is expected to be very bleak, the state government needs to adopt strategy to woo tourists from other countries like European Union and USA so that the tourism sector is not affected severely, Mohanty pointed out.

“They (the Japanese) will not think of visiting other countries in the next two to three years as the country has been ravaged by multiple disasters”, said Santosh Kumar, president of Ganjam District Hotel Association. Besides the Buddhist sites, the Japanese tourists also visit beach resort towns like Puri and Gopalpur-on-Sea.

“Although the number of Japanese tourists visiting the state is very less, the government was expecting the flow to increase after its aggressive campaign to highlight the Buddhist sites of the state”, said a tour operator.

In the last three years, the flow of tourists from Japan was increasing, sources said. In 2009, a total 45,684 foreign tourists had visited the state and around 3,500 of them were from Japan.

The major chunk of overseas tourists to the state was from USA and Western Europe.

The state's domestic tourist traffic stood at around 69 lakh which included 41.39 lakh tourists from within the state and 27.52 lakh from other states.

The earnings from the tourism sector during 2009-10 has been assessed at Rs 3,717.72 crore, an increase of 9.7 percent over 2008-09.