Japan has seen a fall in the number of visitor arrivals for the first time in more than five years.
The Japan National Tourism Organisation said arrivals dipped 5.3% in September.
It was the first year-on-year drop since January 2013 for the country, which will host the ABTA Travel Convention next year.
However, the fall doesn’t come as a surprise as tourism leaders were expecting a drop following the double whammy of a powerful typhoon and earthquake within days of each other earlier this year.
The strongest tropical cyclone in 25 years slammed into Osaka, causing immense flooding and travel chaos for days.
A magnitude 6.7 earthquake then struck Hokkaido in northern Japan, killing 40 people, just a few days later.
It knocked out power to the entire island for several days.
Just prior to these incidents, tourism growth had begun to dip due to a slowdown in the China market.
China makes up nearly a third of all inbound arrivals.
Shinzo Abe’s government has made tourism a key focus and maintains an ambitious target of attracting 40 million tourists by the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. The country will also host the Rugby World Cup in 2019.
