The ancient capital of Japan, Kyoto, is one of the best-preserved areas of the country, bragging of an enormous 17 UNESCO world heritage sites luring thousands of visitors to its historic streets every year.
In recent times, there have been so many visitors to Kyoto that the city has been fighting enormously with problems related to overtourism. Nevertheless, after the coronavirus outbreak in January, which prompted the Chinese government to restrict on international outbound group tours, the city is currently going through a problem on the opposite end of the spectrum — a dramatic slum in tourist numbers that local shop owners claim that they haven’t seen anything like it in 30 years.
For Chinese tourists, Kyoto being one of the top most preferred destinations, who make up the largest contingent of foreign visitors to Japan, the ban on travel is impacting businesses in a hard way, and as the number of coronavirus cases in Japan rising constantly, a huge number of locals and other international tourists are also shunning travel, which is compounding the problem.
To manage the issue, merchants around the Ukyo and Nishikyo wards in the Arashiyama district of Kyoto have started a new advertising campaign to encourage tourists to visit the area. The slogan for the campaign is “Suitemasu Arashiyama“, which translates to “Empty Arashiyama“, and four images have been produced for the promotion, each one showing a popular tourist spot in the area.
