The Japan Tourism Agency will poll international visitors that have travel insurance, in an effort to determine ways to increase uptake of travel cover among tourists.

The agency is alarmed with the number of cases where visitors enter Japan without travel insurance, receive medical treatment for an emergency, then leave the country with the treatments left unpaid.

According to a report by the Japan Times, the survey is likely to be held at airports’ departure areas. The agency is currently formulating the questions to be asked and polling may last until March.

Some of the questions being considered are whether the visitor has travel insurance, what type of cover it is, whether they suffered illness or injury while in Japan, and whether they received medical attention.

A trial survey conducted by the agency in 2013 revealed that around 30% of visitors did not have travel insurance to cover potential medical costs during their stay in Japan.

The Japanese government aims to increase the number of tourists to Japan from 24 million in 2016 to 40 million by 2020, the year of the Tokyo Olympics.

The Japan Tourism Agency will use the information gathered to come up with more effective ways to inform visitors about the country’s medical system and encourage them to purchase travel insurance. It also hopes to provide medical institutions with information about foreign visitors.

The agency will also provide tourists with more information about the different travel insurance choices they have when visiting Japan.


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