A few months ago, news came out that Japan is giving 10,000 free round trip tickets to foreigners in order to promote the safety of visiting Japan. Sadly, today the Japan Tourism Agency announced that its “Fly to Japan!” project for 2012 has been cancelled because its budget was not approved.
The “Fly to Japan!” project was supposed to be given to tourists and have them write their experiences online about Japan. The Japanese Tourism Agency planned to allocate 1.1 billion yen ($14 million USD) from its requested budget. Unfortunately it was not approved citing that they need to focus in rehabilitating disaster-stricken areas.
From the Japan National Tourism Organization:
We realise that this announcement is going to disappoint thousands of people around the world, but we hope people will understand how insensitive it would appear for the Japanese Government to give people free flights to Japan when the cities, towns and villages devastated by the tsunami are still in desperate need of funding for reconstruction. We also would not want people thinking that the generous donations given from around the world to aide those affected by the disaster was being spent on giving people free flights.
Sauce: Anime News Network
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Comments
Whoa, didn’t know the news about this one. “Giving free flights”?WTF!!! Its a good idea that they just use the funds for the aiding that their fellow country men needed instead. Good move!
that’s understandable. their own country’s well being comes first and 14 billion dollars doesn’t come quite often too, even if it is donated.
That suck our own Kazuki was one of the holders of a ticket~
well it seemed too good to be true the fact of havin a free ticket to voyage to japan even though it was devastated by a tsunami seemed like a proper wet dream when u usually wake up wet and filled with regrets not beeing able to remember the good things that uve actually dreamed about the fact in itself was a good try but they need the cash for the reconstruction so it seems to be a fair alternative even though it might destroy some winners dreams of gettin a free japan ticket
Rawr, bad decision on their side. Better reputation would mean not only more tourists, but also more positive attention, more investors who could possibly look into prospects of investing after “accidentally” hearing about Japan, etc.
Bummer..
F*** you Japan!!!
just because of this, I’m never watching anime ever again
…………for two days
Yeah, have to agree that this probably wasn’t the best PR decision. $14 million USD really isn’t that significant and no one would’ve called them on being insensitive.
Best decision from a humanitarian standpoint. Not so much from an economic standpoint.