Hong Kong: In unfounded online rumors warn that a large earthquake will soon touch Japan with travel companies and airlines that report less demand from the Hong Kongers worried.
The people of Hong Kong made almost 2.7 million trips to Japan in 2024.
Although it is impossible to know exactly when the earthquakes will hit, the predictions that induce fear have extended widely among the city's residents.
Some of the false publications cite a Japanese manga comic, republished in 2021, which predicts a great natural disaster in July 2025, based on the author's dream.
Other publications offer different dates, while a Facebook group that claims to predict disasters in Japan has more than a quarter of a million members, mainly in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
“The prophecy of the earthquake has absolutely caused a great change in the preferences of our clients,” said Frankie Chow, head of Hong Kong Travel Agency Cls Holiday.
Chow told AFP that in March and April his company received 70-80% less consultations about traveling to Japan than last year.
“I had never experienced this before,” said Chow, who also directs the Flyagain Reservations website.
While some people changed their destiny, others “did not dare to travel,” he said.
Mild to moderate earthquakes are common in Japan, where strict construction codes minimize damage, even larger milkshakes.
But the nation is no stranger to important disasters, even in 2011 when an earthquake of magnitude-9.0 triggered a tsunami that left 18,500 people dead or missing and caused a devastating crisis in the Fukushima nuclear plant.
The earthquakes rarely feel in Hong Kong, but some people easily scare about misinformation, Chow said.
'Megaquake' warning
Last month, the Tokyo Cabinet office said on the social media platform X: “Predict the earthquakes by date, time and place is not possible to based on current scientific knowledge.”
An official of the Cabinet office told AFP that the X Post was part of its usual information about earthquakes.
But Asahi Shimbun Daily in Japan reported that he was responding to the prophecies that emerged online after a Japanese government panel in January published a new estimate for the probability of a “Megaqueke”.
The panel said that the possibility of a massive earthquake along the underwater exchange of Japan in the next three decades had marginally increased to 75-82%.
This was followed by a new damage estimation in March from the cabinet office, which said that a Megakeke and Nankai Tsunami could cause 298,000 deaths in Japan.
Despite being a routine update of a 2014 previous figure, the estimate seems to have fueled the fears of tourists.
A YouTube video with a Feng Shui teacher urging viewers not to visit Japan, published by the HK01 local media, has been seen more than 100,000 times.
Don Hon, one of the 7.5 million residents of Hong Kong, does not completely believe online statements, but has still been influenced by them.
“I will simply take it as a precaution and I will not do any particular plan to travel to Japan,” said the 32 -year -old social worker.
And if a friend asked him to visit Japan in July, Hon “could suggest going to another place.”
'There is no reason to worry'
Greater Bay Airlines, based in Hong Kong, has reduced flights to the Tokushima region in southern Japan, said a local tourism official to the AFP.
“The company said the demand has reduced us quickly in the midst of rumors that there will be a large earthquake and tsunami in Japan this summer,” he said.
“Three scheduled per week and return flights will be reduced to two round trip trips per week from May 12 to October 25”.
The airline is also reducing its flights to Sendai in the northern region of Miyagi.
“There is no reason to worry,” the governor of Miyagi, Yoshihiro Murai, reassured travelers, adding that the Japanese do not flee.
But “if non -scientific rumors on social networks are affecting tourism, that would be an important problem,” he said last month.
According to the National Tourism Organization of Japan, the number of visitors to Hong Kong in March was 208,400, almost 10% year -on -year.
However, this decrease was partly due to Easter holidays from mid -April of this year, instead of March, they said.
Egl Tours, based in Hong Kong, has not seen a massive decrease in customers traveling to Japan, said executive director Steve Huen Kwok-Chuen.
But recent reserves in their two hotels in Japan show less guests of Hong Kong, while the number of other global destinations remains stable.
In any case, in the probable case that the predictions are not passed, “people will realize that it is not true,” he said.
