Japan Airlines offers free domestic flights to international travelers

• Japan Airlines offers free domestic flights to tourists from the United States and other select countries.
• To qualify, tourists must book round-trip international flights with Japan Airlines.
• Tokyo saw a record number of international visitors in 2023, boosting tourism spending to $37 billion.

Japan is a popular tourist destination, and a new initiative will make visiting easier – and more affordable – than ever before.

According to a recent announcement on its website, Japan Airlines is offering free domestic flights to tourists from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.

It will also be available to tourists from Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, China and Taiwan.

To be eligible for the free tickets, passengers must book round-trip international flights on the same airline and the domestic flights must be booked in the same reservation as the international flights.

Travelers from the United States, Canada, Mexico and China who plan to stay longer than 24 hours at their first destination will be charged a $100 stopover fee.

A spokesperson for Japan Airlines told Business Insider that “no end date has been set” for the initiative.

The new initiative means lesser-known cities and towns will become more accessible.

Grace Cheng, a New York-based travel blogger, previously told BI that tourists visiting Japan often make the mistake of only traveling to the capital Tokyo, which doesn't fully reflect how broad and diverse the culture is.

Tokyo has become increasingly popular in recent years. According to data tracking website Statista, the number of international visitors to the city reached a record 19.54 million in 2023.

In the same year, the value of tourism spending by international visitors was about 5.31 trillion Japanese yen, or about $37 billion, the website said.

Related stories

“Tokyo is not Japan,” Cheng said. “And you have to explore the other cities to actually get a feel for what Japan is like.”

Cheng recommends a visit to Sapporo in Hokkaido Prefecture in northern Japan. She said it was often cheaper than the capital and had friendly locals.

Meanwhile, Harper's Bazaar Singapore recommends visiting Kanazawa, on the east coast of Japan's Honshu island, for its Edo-period architecture, historic teahouses, and traditional Japanese artists, also known as geishas.

The outlet also named several other popular locations, including Naoshima, an island city in the Seto Inland Sea.