Is this part of the problem with the SP....Japan flights safe,...

Is this part of the problem with the SP....


Japan flights safe, for now
Email Print Normal font Large font By Deborah Cameron
Tokyo
January 28, 2006

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AdvertisementAustralia is in a last-ditch campaign to stop Japan Airlines cutting flights Down Under amid concerns that a rich market is bored with holidaying in Sydney.

The airline confirmed its doubts about the viability of the Australian route to Tourism Minister Fran Bailey in Tokyo on Thursday but pledged it would not cut services in 2006, which Mrs Bailey said was reassuring. But this seems to leave the airline with options for 2007.

Japanese tourism to Australia seems to be on a one-way downward slide, with numbers last year down 3.5 per cent, compounding a string of declines since the peak in 1997 when 821,400 Japanese visited.

A new $13 million marketing campaign — the most it has ever spent — has been devised by Tourism Australia to "reverse the trend", Mrs Bailey said. She said that research had been unable to identify a clear cause but that there were suggestions that it was "the product".