After organisers announcing a ban on overseas fans for the upcoming Tokyo
Olympics 2021, fears of heavy financial losses run high among businesses in the
Japanese capital, as establishment owners strive to find a way out of imminent tourism
disaster. The tourism and hospitality industry had an immensely successful
stint during the Rugby World Cup in 2019, welcoming a record 31.9 million foreign
visitors at the time, reported AFP.

The situation this time around, however, is different, as in March,
2020 strict virus were imposed, with regulations barring foreign tourists from
entering Japan and Tokyo Olympics being scheduled to 2021.

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“I am guessing foreign visitors won’t be allowed
until at least September. You have to look ahead and plan ahead to run a
business,” AFP quoted Toshiko Ishii, a traditional Japanese inn-owner in
Tokyo, as saying.

Ishii reportedly spent $180,000 to renovate her inn,
expecting a flood of tourists, but laments that currently she will not be able
to host a single foreign fan.

“I was thinking, ‘Next year with the Olympics,
everything is going to be going up and up’.

Now all of a sudden everything has evaporated”, she
was further quoted as saying.

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Yui Oikawa, owner of Tokyo Rickshaw, a tourism-based
business operating out of the historic Asakusa district of the city, said his
company was implementing sanitation measures to bring in domestic customers to replace,
at least in some degree, the void created due to the absence of international customers.

“I was sad and disappointed… but you cannot
stand still. We are looking at this period as a time to build up our strength”,
Oikawa was quoted by AFP as saying.

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Reportedly, the arrival of international tourists
is often overestimated, with the total spending from the group to have likely
generated 95 billion yen ($870 million), as per research firm Capital
Economics.

After a contraction of the Japanese GDP – the third
largest in the world – in 2020 by 4.8%, the country is aiming to grow via other
measures, such as government stimulus and exporting products to other countries.