Japanese Government Appear Determined on Casino Resorts

Lawmakers positioned in Japan’s political chambers have doubled-down on their support for a policy that permits the construction of large-format integrated resorts on native soil. The backing came via comments outlined in a 36-page economic policy article released by officials on Tuesday.

Japanese politicians have long-since been identifying avenues to resuscitate the country’s ailing inbound tourism sector, which was almost completely halted as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic. Renewed focus on the island-state’s gambling industry features heavily in government planning, with the aforementioned document revealing that IR efforts will be ‘strongly promoted’ alongside support for improvement in ‘casino regulation’.

Japan’s Minister for Land, Infrastructure, Transport & Tourism, Tetsuo Saito, hopes that the plans unveiled in the ‘’revival of tourism-orientated nation’’ section of the white paper will significantly boost visitation levels. Saito has been set an ambitious target of securing 60m inbound visitors by the end of the decade, and has the success of IR’s could play an integral towards the realisation of this number.

A key feature of plan will see an acceleration in the volume of inbound air travellers, facilitated by heavy investment in aviation infrastructure. To complement this enterprise, incumbent Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, recently announced a loosening of COVID-19 border restrictions, which are set to imminently go live.

As of tomorrow (Friday 10^th June), visitors from a list of 98 approved countries and jurisdictions, will not be mandated to pass nucleic acid testing on entering Japan. Furthermore, compulsory quarantine periods for travellers entering the country from these pre-determined low-risk regions will be abolished. However, these rule changes will exclusively apply to official travel groups only as authorities monitor the success of this pilot scheme.

Despite strong government support, only two prefectures have submitted formal IR District Development Plans, despite substantial initial interest from a number of localities. It’s believed that Osaka and Nagasaki, the two parties in question, will learn whether their respective applications have been successful at some stage in autumn.