Japan Wants To Pay You To Visit

Above, a nighttime view of the Tokyo Skytree. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

It would be nice to travel to a foreign country and have half of a traveler's expenses paid for by that country.

According to an article in Forbes, Japan is planning such a move.

The problem is: the details have yet to be worked out on how they're going to do it. One could use the old cliché: The devil is in the details. But we don't know what they are.

According to Forbes:

Last month, the Italian island of Sicily announced that it will pay a portion of travelers’ post-coronavirus trip costs by covering half of airline tickets plus one out of every three hotel nights. Now Japan is feeling generous, too, and hoping to fill its currently empty ryokans, bullet trains and sushi restaurants with travelers from around the globe. According to the Japan Times, the head of the Japan Tourism Agency announced this week that the government has created a plan to attract foreign travelers back to the tourism-depleted country by offering to subsidizing half of their travel expenses.

This enticing new program will cost Japan a cool $12.5 billion. And while there aren’t any details about how it will work or whether there will be expense limits, the initiative could start as soon as July 2020, depending on when travel restrictions for foreign visitors ease up.

Sounds interesting. It will be even more interesting to see how the proposed plan will work if Japan goes through with it.

Stay tuned!

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