ROLUL STRATEGIEI DE BRAND A JAPONIEI N DEZVOLTAREA TURISTIC A RII

The Japanese government found in 2002 that over 16 million people from Japan are travelling abroad annually, but Japan is visited only by 5 million foreign tourists. Therefore, in early 2003, Japan launched the brand strategy named “Yōkoso! Japan”, whose aim was to attract annually 10 million foreign tourists by the end of 2010.The number of foreign tourists has decreased by 18.7% in 2009 as compared to 2008. As a result, in April 2010, Japan launches the rebranding strategy “Endless Discovery. Japan”. This strategy has set the same target as the one in 2003 and moreover, a new objective of increasing the number of visitors by 15 million tourists within the timeframe of 2013. Even if this campaign has not achieved its objective, the number of visitors increased by 26.8% in 2010 as compared to 2009, reaching 8.6 million, and the first results of 2011 have been encouraging (1.4 million foreign tourists, which means an increase of 6.8% over the same time period – January-February – of 2010). Nevertheless, in March 2011, Japan’s income from tourism dropped by about 60% as compared to the same period of the previous year. Why? Because of the earthquake that shook Japan on March 11. The Japanese government announced that the direct damage from the disaster rises to 6% of GDP. Will Japan be able to recover soon in terms of image and number of tourists in these conditions using the same successful strategy? Only the time will decide.