KUALA LUMPUR - A recent magnitude 7.5 earthquake off northeastern Japan has underscored the need for the country to communicate safety guidance and evacuation information to foreigners more effectively amid a surge in inbound tourism.

Tsunami warnings were issued for parts of Hokkaido’s Pacific coast as well as Aomori and Iwate prefectures, prompting evacuation calls for both residents and foreign visitors, as reported by Kyodo News.

Among those affected was Filipino tourist Jose San Juan, who received an earthquake alert on his smartphone while staying at a hotel in Sapporo but was unable to evacuate because he did not know where to go.

Mayumi Sakamoto, a professor at the University of Hyogo’s Graduate School of Disaster Resilience and Governance said information such as places to evacuate to are not properly delivered to foreigners with great urgency.

At the JR Inn Hakodate, where many guests were from overseas, the earthquake registered a level five on Japan’s seven-point seismic intensity scale, according to a hotel employee.

The hotel instructed guests in Japanese and English to move to the upper floors to avoid a tsunami, but confusion led some to descend to the first-floor lobby instead.

At another accommodation in Hakodate, disaster-related information was displayed on a whiteboard but was written only in Japanese.

A South Korean female guest said she managed to understand the instructions by photographing the information and using an application that generated Korean translations.

Sakamoto said Japan must swiftly establish systems that can smoothly deliver critical information to foreigners, including introducing multilingual applications and websites to visitors upon arrival.

Japan recorded a historic high of 36.87 million foreign visitors last year, while arrivals reached 35.54 million by October this year, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.