Hong Kong: Not founded online rumors warning that a huge earthquake will soon strike Japan to travel companies and airlines that report less demand from worried Honggers.
The people of Hong Kong made nearly 2.7 million trips to Japan in 2024.
Although it is impossible to know exactly when earthquakes strike, predictions inducing fear have spread among city residents.
Some of the false posts cite a comic strip of Japanese manga, republished in 2021, which predicted a major natural disaster in July 2025 – on the basis of the author’s dream.
Other articles give different dates, while a Facebook group which 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 absolutely caused a big change in the preferences of our customers,” said Frankie Chow, head of the Hong Kong CLS Holiday travel agency.
Chow told AFP that in March and April, his company had received 70 to 80% of requests on trip to Japan until last year.
“I have never experienced this before,” said Chow, who also runs the Flyagain booking website.
While some people have changed their destination, others “dared not travel,” he said.
Light to moderate earthquakes are common in Japan, where strict construction codes minimize damage, even by larger shakes.
But the nation is not unrelated to major disasters, especially in 2011 when a 9.0 magnitude earthquake sparked a tsunami which made 18,500 people who died or disappeared and caused a devastating crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Earthquakes are very rarely felt in Hong Kong, but some people are easily frightened by disinformation, Chow said.
Warning ‘Megaquake’
Last month, the Tokyo cabinet said on the social media platform X: “Predding earthquakes by date, time and place is not possible on the basis of current scientific knowledge.”
An official of the Office firm told AFP that the X Post was part of its usual information sharing on earthquakes.
But Japan Asahi Shimbun Daily reported that it was responding to the prophecies that emerged online after a Japanese government committee in January has published a new estimate for the probability of a “megaquake”.
The panel said the chance of a massive earthquake along the Nankai submarine in southern Japan over the following three decades had slightly increased to 75 to 82%.
This was followed by a new estimate of the damage in March of the Office cabinet, which said that a megaquake and tsunami from Nankai in Trough could cause 298,000 deaths in Japan.
Despite being a routine update of a previous 2014 figure, the estimate seems to have attracted the fears of tourists.
A YouTube video featuring a Feng Shui master urging viewers not to visit Japan, published by local HK01 media, has been seen more than 100,000 times.
Don Hon, one of the 7.5 million residents of Hong Kong, does not fully believe the online claims, but has always been influenced by them.
“I will simply take it as a precaution and I will not make any particular plan to go to Japan,” said the 32 -year -old social worker.
And if a friend should ask him to visit Japan in July, Hon “could suggest going elsewhere”.
‘No reason to worry’
Greater Bay Airlines, based in Hong Kong, reduced thefts to the southern Tokushima region in Japan, a local tourism official told AFP.
“The company said that American demand quickly decreased in the midst of rumors that there will be a large earthquake and tsunami in Japan this summer,” she said.
“Three scheduled weekly flights scheduled will be reduced to twoties per week from May 12 to October 25.”
The airline also reduces its flights to Sendai in the northern region of Miyagi.
“There is no reason to worry,” reassured Miyagi travelers, Yoshihiro Murai, adding that the Japanese do not flee.
But “if non-scientific rumors on social networks have an impact on tourism, it would be a major problem,” he said last month.
According to the National Tourism Organization of Japan, the number of visitors from Hong Kong in March was 208,400 – down almost 10% in annual shift.
However, this drop was partly due to the Easter holidays from mid-April this year, instead of March, they said.
EGL Tours, based in Hong Kong, has not experienced a massive drop in customers traveling to Japan, said its executive director Steve Huen Kwok-Chuen.
But recent reservations of its two hotels in Japan show fewer people from Hong Kong, while the number of other world destinations remains stable.
In any case, in the likely case that predictions are not realized, “people will realize that this is not true,” he said.
