Accommodation’s difficulties and attitude towards inbound tourism in Japan’s rural heritage destinations

The inbound tourism industry is experiencing a rapid growth period with overtourism in certain main tourism hubs (Kerr, 2019), leading to overcrowded traffic situations (Ryder, 2019) and a negative impression on residents (Reid & Ek, 2020). The tourism industry as a whole is designated as an important part of Japan’s economy, and a key point in reviving the rural communities experiencing depopulation and ageing society. Accommodations need to follow the change, with an investment of resources into services, human recourses and amenities desired by foreign tourists. This change is difficult for rural Japanese accommodations, with a lack of workforce and tools for development. This paper aims to gather information on what kind of problems accommodations in rural heritage destinations face in Japan and to assess their overall attitude towards inbound tourisms and the foreigner tourist. Results show that the lack of workforce and foreign language speak workforce is one of the most severe problems of rural accommodations. Attitude towards inbound tourism is generally positive, with a moderate level of concerns of communication difficulties, manner problems and similar problems that can come up in an intercultural exchange. The local governments need to address the lack of workforce and provide possibilities and aid to entrepreneurs, as creating a multilingual facility environment in rural communities is possible more difficult than in tourism hubs. While the establishments are looking positively forward to foreign tourists, the managers don’t feel that the 2020 Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games will have a significant impact on their businesses.

inbound

rural

heritage destination

accommodation survey

attitude survey