An Analysis of Development of the Regional Tourism in Ishikawa Prefecture:

A Case Study of Four Municipalities in the Northern Noto Area

Abstract

In numerous regional areas in Japan, tourism policies have played an important role for the regional development, which includes the advance of their local economy. The main target of this paper is to analyze how regional tourism policies are implemented in the regions investigated. The target areas of study are constituted of four municipalities in the Oku-Noto area in Ishikawa Prefecture. Ishikawa Prefecture is located by the Japan Sea, and the Oku-Noto area lies in the northern region of Ishikawa. This area does not have a train system (with just one train station at the southern border of the region), but has an airport (Noto Airport) and a freeway (Noto Satoyama Kaido). There are two direct flights between Noto and Haneda, Tokyo, which take about fifty to sixty-five minutes. The freeway connects Kanazawa City, the capital of Ishikawa Prefecture, to the gate city to the Oku-Noto area in about two to two and half hours. From the multiple regression analysis, the train system, which stops only at the entrance of this area, is yet shown to play a valuable role in visiting this area. Especially after the launch of the Hokuriku Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kanazawa in 2015, the number of the visitors to the Oku-Noto area increased, and in 2019 the total number of the visitors rose to around three and half million, as compared to three million in 2014, showing no negative effects of COVID-19. For the increasing visitors to this area is largely attributable to the tourism policies of these Oku-Noto municipalities, the analysis of their budgets for accepting tourists is also conducted. The result indicates, especially from the perspective of the relations between the number of the visitors and the volume of the budgets, two of the aforementioned municipalities have utilized their budgets with relative efficiency, in comparison with the other two municipalities. Moreover since the launch of the Hokuriku Shinkansen in 2015, the efficiency between the two figures above have been relatively better, especially in two of the municipalities. Since 2020 though, the time of rampancy of COVID-19, the negative effects to the regional tourism have been quite severe in all the municipalities analyzed in this paper.