A foreign tourist makes paperwork to deliver her duty-free purchases to Hong Kong on March 15 in Tokyo's Ota Ward. Go Takahashi The Japan Tourism Agency is promoting a relatively obscure delivery system that allows foreign tourists to lighten their loads by sending duty-free purchases to their home countries.
With tourism numbers recovering since COVID 19 restrictions were lifted last year, the government expects the delivery program to help raise annual tourist spending to 5 trillion yen $37.76 billion as early as possible.
An agency official said that visitors may be encouraged to buy multiple units of a product. Without this service, they would pick up only one due to the heavy weight. The duty-free item delivery mechanism was introduced in 2016 so that foreign tourists could travel lighter around Japan. The system is intended to increase spending per tourist and encourage them to travel to rural areas.
But few duty-free stores took advantage of it because the framework was not well-known.
The system was recently used by Sumitomo Realty Development Co. at the Haneda Airport Garden commercial complex, which was fully opened in late January at the international airport in Tokyo's Ota Ward.
Short-stay visitors can use the fee-based delivery service by taking items purchased at the 48 duty-free shops in the complex to the tax-exemption counter for a week until March 19, when they can be taken to the tax-exemption counter. A Filipino woman bought Japanese sake, sweets, chopsticks and other items from souvenir stores at the airport on March 15, totaling 55,000 yen.
Her cart of items cost 7,000 yen to ship to Hong Kong, where she works.
She said that it would have been exhausting lugging around all of the items, because she said it would have been exhausting.
The agency will encourage more tax-exempt shops to incorporate the service.
Their passports and visa status must be confirmed by store operators for duty-free purchases. Store staff can scan QR codes to confirm the information if they enter their data into the website beforehand, so store staff can quickly and efficiently verify the information, government officials said.