13) 觀光ホテル建設計畫について

Abstract

Tourist industry we say, but it is least enthusiastic about domestic tourists in the situation of Japan today. The important problem for the moment is international tourist industry, with which foreign visitors are the object. In pre-war era it occupied 14% of nation's invisible export, reaching 108,000,000 yen in 1936. In post-war times, its importance has immensely increased as the sole factor of invisible export. In 1948,6,310 foreigners entered Japan and spent 3,440,000 dollars, while in 1949, 6,070 persons spending 3,540,000 dollars have been recorded before July; and presumably, it will reach 17,000 persons and 9,980,000 dollars by the end of this year. Still this is quite small when compared with pre-war foreign money receipt of 350,000,000 dollars. Therefore, we have to foster tourist industry strongly to increase foreign money acquirement. This is still more significant as "unseen export" when our foreign trade is not quite prosperous as we desire it to be. There are three fundamental key points in development of tourist industry. They are the preservation of sources of tourist interest, propaganda to allure foreign visitors, and arrangement of receiving facilities for foreign tourists. One of the most important in arrangement of receiving facilities is lodging repletion of hotels. There are 97 hotels in Japan, and 70 of them are either occupied for army use or for exclusive use of traders, not available to the general public. Of remaining 27, no more than 10 with a total accommodation capacity of only 617 persons may be used by foreign visitors. Since entrance of traders was permitted in August 1947, restrictions in entering Japan have gradually been mitigated and, as the result, number of foreigners entering Japan is increasing as 6,310 persons for 1948 and 6,070 persons for first six months of 1949 as mentioned above. For receiving these and those who are coming increasing number in future and taking thought on poor status of existing hotels, it is quite urgent to build sufficient hotels and increase accommodation capacity. Where to build what size of hotels" are learnt when we study how foreign tourists travel around in Japan and where, how many persons, and how many days they stay, comparing these with present accommodatian capacity in places. The result is that a total of 2,172 beds are short at Nikko, Tokyo, Yokohama, Kamakura, Hakone, Nagoya, Ise-shima, Kyoto, Nara, Osaka and Hiroshima. Of these, priority must be given to Tokyo, Yokohama, Kyoto, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, Nara and Ise-shima. Renting of Counterpart Fund of 253,000,000 yen is anticipated for total construction expenses of 640,000,000 yen for four hotels at Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, Nara and Ise-shima, while the other places Can not launch construction work because there is no possible way to raise the necessafy loans, although they have already concrete plans. Construction of a hotel is considerably difficult, especially under the present economic situation in Japan, for hotel business requires a great amount of fixed assets and on the other hand, it yields comparatively small profits. We have requested Hotel Construcoson Expenses several times in the Public Enterprise Budget, only to fail every time on the reason that financial condition of the government is deplorable. Now, it is the most urgent keypoint for development of tourist industry to give solution to this loan problem for hotel business by means of expanding categories of Counterpart Fund or renting Low Interest Fund of Deposit Department, Ministry of Finance or otherwise, enacting such a law as "Law of Raising Loans for Hotel Business." It is our plan to use high class Japanese style hotels for foreign visitors by means of improving them for the time-being until hotel construction is commenced with steadiness. This has been partly practised with proper success. This method will be followed for the present to get through the crisis.