Japan quake cancels hotel bookings

Japan: Japanese officials say more than 500,000 people have canceled their hotel reservations nationwide following the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in Japan.The Japan Tourism Agency announced on Tuesday that some 560,000 people have canceled reservations nationwide since the quake hit the Asian country on March 11.

The number of the dead and missing from the March quake and tsunami now stands at over 28,000 Since the figure as of April 8 does not include the cancelations in the disaster-hit Iwate and Chiba prefectures, the total number must be even greater, JapanToday reported.Japan Tourism Agency Commissioner Hiroshi Mizohata also said that the number of foreign tourists visiting the country in March might have declined substantially from about 710,000 in 2010 which shows that the agency should revise its goal of attracting 11 million foreign travelers this year.

Surveys conducted by the Japan Association of Travel Agents on five major travel agencies showed that the number of domestic travelers in the fourth week of March also dropped 25 to 40 percent from the first week of the month.Travel reservations in April and May also declined 20 to 45 percent from a year earlier as of April 7, surveys revealed. The March 11 earthquake, which unleashed a massive tsunami, set off nuclear problems in Japan by knocking out power to the cooling systems of reactors at the Fukushima plant and leading to radiation leakage.

According to the National Police Agency, the number of the dead and missing from the March quake and tsunami now stands at over 28,000.

Tuesday, presstv