The tourism market between Australia and Japan is getting a big increase this week with COVID-era border restrictions gone from Tuesday.
This week is exciting for an Australian airline, airport, and travelers operators, with one of the country’s best markets reopening to visa-free travel. From October 11th, Japan resumes its visa exemption scheme for short-stay tourism and business travel from selected countries.
Australian airline
The move is paving the way for inbound and outbound tourism to take off between the two nations. Japan is also abolishing its daily coming cap, thereby opening its doors to an independent journey after more than 2 years of strict COVID-19 restrictions.
Qantas is growing services to Haneda International Airport (HND) from Sydney in November and resuming services from Brisbane in December and Melbourne in March 2023. Jetstar has restarted Cairns to Narita and Osaka services and Gold Coast to Tokyo Narita Airport (NRT) flights. Today, Brisbane Airport welcomed the news that direct flights to Japan are resuming on December 1st.
Qantas will operate 3 times a week, departing on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday to Haneda from Brisbane operating Airbus A330 aircraft. According to ch-aviation.com, Qantas has 23 of its A330s in service, with five inactive. CEO of Qantas International, Andrew David, told that the launch of flights between Haneda and Brisbane Airport (BNE) will encourage more tourists from Japan to Australia’s Sunshine State.
“Qantas is the 1st airline to operate commercial scheduled flights between Haneda and Brisbane and forward bookings are tracking well, in particular for the upcoming Australian holiday period.”
On Friday, Australia’s flag carrier Qantas declared it was celebrating the reopening by making available 100,000 frequent flyers (FF) reward seats between Australia and Japan. It will also operate 2 Points Planes between Sydney International Airport (SYD) and Tokyo Haneda on May 10th, 2023. Qantas will also mark the resumption of flights from Sydney to Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) on January 30th, 2023, with Points Planes. For the unfamiliar, every seat, including in business class, on a Qantas Points Plane is bookable with FF points.
Qantas and Jetstar
Qantas and Jetstar will make every economy seat between Australia and Japan available as a Classic Flight Reward from May 11th to June 20th, 2023. All economy seats on Jetstar flights between Australia and Japan from October 11th until November 30th will also be available as Classic Flight Rewards.
Qantas is offering the reward seats on flights between Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, and Tokyo Haneda, while Jetstar’s offer is for flights between Cairns International Airport (CNS) and Tokyo Narita and Osaka Kansai Airport (KIX) and the Gold Coast Airport (OOL) and Narita.
In the financial year that ended June 30th, 2019, more than 484,000 Japanese tourists visited Australia, leaving behind an estimated AU$2 billion ($1.28 billion) spent during their visit. It was ranked fifth highest for travelers and tourism-related spending, with China topping the list ahead of the USA, the UK, and New Zealand.
The most common reason for Japanese people to visit Australia is for holidays, followed by business travel and visiting friends and relatives.
Brisbane Airport says that the outbound services will be equally as popular, given that Google revealed that “Japan is the number 1 travel destination searched by Australians over the past twenty years.”
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