Okaeri.
Welcome back.
A consumer campaign for the moment Japan reopened to the world: rebuilding desire and arrivals under JNTO's "okaeri", welcome back, and spreading the welcome beyond the three cities everyone already knew.
A country the world was dreaming of, and could not yet visit.
Japan spent the pandemic almost entirely closed to tourism, among the last major destinations to reopen its doors. When visa-free individual travel finally returned in October 2022, for visitors from dozens of countries, the country had to re-introduce itself to a world that had spent three years longing for it.
There were two problems at once. The first was raw demand: turning years of pent-up desire into actual bookings. The second was shape: making sure that demand did not pour straight back onto the "Golden Route" of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, where roughly two-thirds of all visitors already cluster.
Rebuild the arrivals, and spread them.
Drive consumer awareness for the reopening under JNTO's "okaeri", welcome back, message, and convert that warmth into measurable recovery in visitor numbers as the borders came down.
At the same time, push demand outward: tell the story of the prefectures, seasons and routes beyond the three headline cities, so that the recovery was healthier and more evenly shared than the boom that came before it.
Built the campaign on a single, human word.
"Okaeri" is what you say to someone coming home. We built the consumer work on that warmth, anchoring awareness on the reopening moment and the feeling of being welcomed back rather than sold to.
Then we used that attention to open the map. The message moved from "see Japan" toward "come back to a Japan you have not met yet", surfacing regional destinations, off-peak seasons and the routes a first-timer would never find, so the welcome reached well past the Golden Route.
One of the fastest recoveries of any major destination.
Japan's reopening became one of the strongest tourism rebounds in the world. Within the campaign window, arrivals from target markets climbed by more than 200% year-on-year as the country reopened, and by late 2023 monthly visitor numbers had returned to within touching distance of their pre-pandemic peak.
Just as important was the shape of it. The dispersion work helped seed a longer shift that continues today, regional Japan moving from afterthought to a reason to come back a second and third time.
A destination
in its next act?
A reopening, a repositioning, a market that needs to spread its visitors more widely. If you would like to talk it through, we would like to listen.