Japan aims to receive 60 million foreign visitors by 2030(Photo: JNTO)
After parts of Tokyo, Kyoto, Mount Fuji and Osaka, now it is the turn of Ginzan Onsen, a Japanese town famous for its hot spring baths, has decided to limit the number of visitors in order to curb overtourism.
A small city in Yamagata Prefecture, Ginzan Onsen gets about 85 visitors for every resident and which has led to backlash from the residents and city officials. As a result, the city has decided to implement several overtourism measures meant to make life easier for its denizens.
Ginzan Onsen is located on the northern part of the main island of Honshu and is one of Japan’s most popular onsen or hot spring baths. The town became famous when it was featured in Oshin, a teleserial broadcast by Japanese state broadcaster NHK.
Since then the town has become very popular with domestic as well as international tourists, who are mainly attracted to its palatial wooden buildings, the ambience of Edo Era Japan, and mysterious nighttime aura. Snowfall adds to the area’s beauty, making it a particularly popular winter destination.
So popular has it become that Ginzan Onsen, which has a population of barely 14,000, attracted over 1.2 million visitors this year, a ratio of 85 visitors for every resident.
Now, the city has changed the rules and day visitors, who don’t have a reservation to stay overnight, will have to park their cars two km away from the onsen district and take a paid shuttle in. Additionally, visitors arriving by bus between the peak hours of 16:00 and 20:00 will require bus reservations in advance.
Ginzan Onsen’s rising popularity is in synch with the boom in international arrivals that Japan as a whole has been experiencing.
The government aims to receive 60 million foreign visitors by 2030. The country has already recorded 33 million overseas tourists this year until November, beating the 31.9 million record set by the whole of 2019, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.
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