On a recent day, buses arrived in succession to a parking lot near the Tsukiji Jogai Shijo (outer market) shopping district in Tokyo.

They were spewing out streams of passengers from abroad.

It’s an all-too-common sight of excursion coaches waiting on the streets to enter filled parking lots. 

“I have to go again soon,” said a driver with a sigh, climbing off the operator’s seat.

The bus driver in his late 60s said he was previously allowed to rest for two hours before the COVID-19 outbreak while passengers had lunch at their destinations.

“I am now supposed to leave for and return from Tokyo Station and Haneda Airport during that time,” moaned the driver. “I have to handle the workload of two people by myself given the lack of drivers.”

With tourism back to full speed in Japan, sightseeing operators nationwide are worried about missing the bus as they no longer have enough drivers to meet the demand.

With a new Shinkansen route soon opening in Fukui Prefecture, rival bus companies in the prefecture are being forced to team up to organize tours.

A shortage of 1,200 buses is forecast in Okinawa in the midst of the peak school trip season in the prefecture.

This shortage is casting a shadow over the rapid rebound in inbound visitors to Japan.

Statistics from the Japan National Tourism Organization show the annual overseas visitors number plummeted 99 percent to 240,000 in 2021 from 31.8 million for 2019.

The yearly figure quickly recovered to 19.8 million by October 2023 following the downgrading of COVID-19 to a Category 5, the same as the seasonal flu, in May.

By contrast, bus drivers have yet to return to their jobs. They are said to have left a spate of bus firms to join truck operators and other businesses amid the novel coronavirus pandemic in a quest for higher salaries.

STRUGGLING NATIONWIDE

Moving to address the lack of drivers, the Okinawa prefectural government embarked on a support campaign in September after an estimate projected the needed bus supply would be short of 1,200 vehicles between October and December.

Educational tours for students are most frequently organized on the southernmost prefecture during that period.

A paltry 40,000 individuals landed on Okinawa on school trips in fiscal 2020 due to the COVID-19 crisis. But the number is expected to rise to 320,000 this fiscal year.

The endeavor aimed to soothe fears about the potential shortfall of drivers that could hit in the busiest tourist season, as a sufficient number of buses were already procured in the meantime.

The local government provided up to 400,000 yen ($2,800) to bus operators that temporarily summoned drivers from outside the prefecture for transporting passengers, to cover those staff members’ lodging and travel costs.

“The situation would turn out to be challenging unless drivers are rounded up from elsewhere,” said a prefectural representative. “The initiative is modeled after a corporation that has long been inviting drivers from Hokkaido, since the tourism season comes at a different time of year in that region.”

Also plagued by the issue is Fukui Prefecture, to where the Hokuriku Shinkansen service will be expanded to in March.

“Even arranging bus tours used to be difficult for us despite our desire to lure sightseers in,” recalled Ai Yoshizumi, an official in charge of package planning at Keifuku Bus, which is headquartered in Fukui city.

Tourist spots are scattered throughout Fukui Prefecture. For that reason, some sort of transportation means is essential for visitors to head for destinations from stations.

But all bus operators are running out of coach drivers, making it difficult for each to manage more than one tourist bus route on their own. Employing 143 drivers, Keifuku Bus saw as many as 29 quit in the past five years.

Five companies in Fukui Prefecture therefore established the joint business initiative Happy Bus toward offering tours together.

Sightseeing packages arranged by respective firms start from four stations and other places in the prefecture. The handling of customers is centralized at a single information counter.

“We will be going all out through trial and error for some time,” noted Yoshizumi.

MISSING OUT ON OPPORTUNITY

A representative of a tourist bus company in the northeastern Tohoku region confessed that the enterprise has “no choice but to turn down reservations for tours.”

The area is packed with hordes of visitors from other Asian countries in the winter attracted to its magnificent snowy landscape. In addition, a rash of bookings for vehicles is coming from travel agencies.

However, drivers at the corporation plunged to one-third owing to the novel coronavirus scare. Getting staffers to work longer is impossible, since the firm cannot pay overtime until it works off debts accumulated during the coronavirus pandemic.

“It is a shame for us to be unable to capitalize on this great opportunity, doing hand-to-mouth business” to repay loans, said the tourist bus company official.

Seeing the policy to revitalize tourism and attract visitors from abroad as one of its key strategies, the central government is doing more than just sitting idly by.

The transport ministry raised its reference fare for sightseeing buses and other chartered vehicles in 2023.

Taking into account the fee presented by the transport ministry as a standard to prevent excessive competition, operators determine their own prices. The finalized charges should be reported to the ministry under the current framework.

The minimum reference rate per hour for large buses accommodating at least 50 passengers in the Kanto region around Tokyo jumped to 6,580 yen from 5,310 yen.

“The reviewed standard fare is anticipated to contribute to the improved wages of drivers and the hiring of new staff members,” said a ministry official. “Our hope is this will help create workplaces one would find easier to work at.”

Aside from that, the state is considering putting non-Japanese drivers into the scope of the new “specified skills” visa system, which is specially designed to bring more foreign workers to Japan, by the end of this fiscal year ending in March.

It is still unclear whether those measures will be immediately effective, given that the exam for a professional driver’s license required to operate passenger buses on roads is not yet available in other languages.

4,000 TRAVELERS TURNED AWAY

Mie Nakajima, president of the staffing agency Ritz MC Inc. for the bus industry, highlighted that the personnel situation in the community is “far from ideal” whereas coach businesses are beginning to actively boost salaries.

Bus operators traditionally preferred exclusively skilled drivers who can hit the road promptly, which means new graduates seldom secured positions at these companies.

Newcomers were often given only temporary posts as well, because employers hesitated to assign permanent roles to those whose abilities have yet to be fully confirmed.

Operators’ being frequently responsible for not only sightseeing tours but also fixed route services is another factor behind the recent labor crunch.

Drivers must be deployed to regular routes although their tourist counterparts are more profitable. That way, bus firms are forced to stop accepting tour participants in many cases.

“It is high time for both the public and private sectors to take aggressive action in the hope of procuring drivers who will assist in meeting the tourism demand,” Nakajima said.

Nakajima said she heard that 4,000 tourists from China failed to arrange buses and thereby changed their destination from Japan to South Korea even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Buses constitute a pillar of tourism,” Nakajima said. “We should not miss an opportunity to earn huge amounts of cash.”