On 24 Feb, CLAIR Sydney exhibited at the Melbourne Japanese Summer Festival 2019. We promoted Melbourne’s sister city, Osaka, and many Japanese prefectures and cities at the event. In addition, we also distributed brochures of upcoming major international sporting events in Japan: the Rugby World Cup 2019, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympic Games, and the World Masters Games 2021 Kansai.
A Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Norikazu Suzuki, took time out from his business trip in Melbourne and visited the CLAIR Sydney booth to assist with promoting various Japanese tourist destinations including his local area, Yamagata Prefecture. Mr Suzuki also answered many questions that the visitors had about Japan.
The festival was blessed with good weather and on the day, and many visitors came to the CLAIR Sydney booth to ask for travel information for destinations all over Japan. There were many questions on the cherry blossoms blooming period of different locations around Japan, recommended travel destinations for the days between the Rugby World Cup matches that the Wallabies will play in, and tourist destinations outside the Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka Golden Route. From the festival, our staff was able to personally witness the apparent increase of Australians’ interest in Japan, and the surge in Australian tourists travelling to Japan.
CLAIR Sydney will continue to actively support Japanese local governments’ initiatives in attracting tourists from Australia, as the latest statistics revealed that Australians are the highest spending international tourists in Japan.
