The intimate looks at locations around the globe made possible by Google Street View has changed the way many of us look at the world. But according to a new piece of information revealed by Google, it turns out that our virtual tourism habits aren’t necessarily aligned with some of our real-world pursuits.
See also: Google Lets You Climb Mount Fuji With Street View
According to Street View program manager Ulf Spitzer, the top virtual tourism destination in Asia using Google Street View is Japan, with Mount Fuji at the head of the list. In fact, Japan occupies the top six most visited Street View location slots, followed by Taiwan and Singapore.
“What’s surprising is how many sites that haven’t been popular offline became online hits,” said Spitzer in a statement on Google Asia Pacific blog.

Image: Google Maps

Spitzer’s observation is borne out by the 2013 MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index, which listed Bangkok, Thailand as the top Asia destination for real-world tourists, followed by Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai and, way down at number seven, Tokyo, Japan.
Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that the study found that, among all destinations around the world, Bangkok held the number one slot, followed by London, Paris, Singapore and New York. Globally, the MasterCard study ranked Japan (specifically, Tokyo) at a lowly 16th place.
Such a large disparity between the obvious online interest in Japan via virtual tourism versus travelers spending real world cash to explore other parts of Asia presents something of a conundrum that may be rooted in perception.

“We don’t believe that Japan is more expensive than other locations, but we understand that some people might have the impression that it is because it’s so far away,” Nori Akashi, public relations manager for the Japan National Tourism Organization, told Mashable. “I don’t think a lot of people realize how manageable the flight is in terms of time.”
At just 13 hours flight time from New York to Tokyo, compared to 17 hours for the same trip to Bangkok, the difference between online interest in Japan and actual trips makes the disconnect even more stark.
However, a 2013 World Economic Forum Travel and Tourism Competitiveness report sheds some light on at least one of the reasons behind these seemingly incongruent data points.
Using figures culled from the United Nations World Tourism Organization, the report found that Thailand ranked 24th in terms of “tourism openness” as measured by tourism expenditure and receipts as a percentage of the country’s GDP. Japan’s rank? Only three slots from the bottom of the list at 137th .

And while the same report gives Japan overall higher marks within its competitive index, the report also ranks Thailand ahead of Japan with regards to the attitude of the local population toward foreign visitors (although Japan did rank ahead of the U.S. in that respect).
Despite these numbers, a recent local tourism traffic achievement, as well as Tokyo’s selection as the site of the 2020 summer Olympic games has given the country’s tourism officials cause for optimism.
“We set a goal for 2013 to bring in 10 million travelers and we reached that goal,” says Akashi. “Our next goal, with the Olympics in sight, is probably 20 million.”
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