Japan Retail Sector Overnight travel statistics (first preliminary report for May): Foreign and Japanese visitor numbers both weak

Research evidence excerpt

Japan Retail Sector Overnight travel statistics (first preliminary report for May): Foreign and Japanese visitor numbers both weak

Powered by Lab Global6 JulyResearch2026ab Evidence UBS YES

Japan Retail Sector Equities

JapanOvernight travel statistics (first preliminary report

for May): Foreign and Japanese visitor numbers Retail

both weak Takahiro KazahayaAnalyst

takahiro.kazahaya@ubs.com

+81-3-5208 6226

Summary Kazuki Oike

Analyst

On 6 July, the Japan Tourism Agency announced its latest Overnight Travel Statistics kazuki.oike@ubs.com

Survey (second preliminary report for April 2026, first preliminary report for May 2026) +81-3-5208 6964

(Link, Japanese only).

Total number of overnight visitors

The total number of overnight visitors fell 4.8% yoy in May (up 3.9% versus 2019) to

53.39mn. Of these, the number of foreign overnight guests declined 13.4% yoy (up

42.0% compared with 2019). The number of Japanese overnight guests was down

1.4% yoy and down 5.0% versus 2019 (Figure 1Trendinthetotalnumberofovernightvisitors- Figure 4 Numberofoverseasovernightvisitors,monthlytrend(comparedwith2019)). The number of Japanese

visitors fell for the seventeenth straight month since January 2025 and the total number

of foreign overnight visitors declined for the second straight month.

UBS view

On 14 November 2025, the Chinese government issued a travel advisory urging Chinese

citizens to refrain from visiting Japan for the time being (Link, Japanese only). Assuming

that the impact of the Chinese government's advisory becomes prolonged, we estimate

the number of inbound visitors from China to Japan at 4.55mn in 2026 (we forecast

9.3mn in 2025), with the overall number of foreign visitors falling 4% yoy to 41.1mn. In