The option of "not increasing tourists"

There's a strange twist in Japan's tourism debate. Kyoto and Kamakura cry out under overtourism, while a town an hour's drive away laments that "no tourists come." Overflowing places and empty places. The solution most often floated is "dispersal" — just channel tourists from the crowded spots out to the regions.

But stand on the ground and the crudeness of that idea shows. A group of a thousand that pulls up in large buses, stays 30 minutes, buys one drink, and leaves — what does it leave the region? Litter, congestion, and a sliver of revenue. What the region truly needs isn't "volume." It's the 40 people who buy the crafts, stay three nights, and come back next year with a friend.

Design "value per visitor"

Watching European travellers, you notice their scale for valuing rural Japan's assets is out of step with the common view inside Japan. What they prize highly is less the famous vista than the texture of everyday life. Work in a tea field, the view from a rural train window, a conversation in a shopping street. The scenery called "nothing" in Japan reads to them as "the real thing." This very asymmetry, I believe, is the starting point for rural inbound strategy.

On top of that, what matters is telling the story in a form that reaches the people you want to come. Not printing brochures in four languages. Having the region's story told within the places they already follow — the media they trust, the creators they follow, the personal articles they read closely. Narrow, deep trust over broad, shallow exposure. In terms of both cost and the wear on the region, this is in fact the rational strategy.

When someone asks me to help them "increase tourists," I make it a rule to ask back first: "If they increase, won't that be a problem?" Replacing a headcount target with a value target. A region's tourism strategy begins to change with that one step.