Japan Hotel Occupancy:

 https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210130/p2g/00m/0bu/020000c

Article:

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The number of people who stayed at hotels and other accommodation facilities in Japan plunged 48.6 percent in 2020 from a year earlier to a record low, government data showed Friday, as entry restrictions into the country were imposed and domestic travel demand was dented due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The cumulative total of hotel guests stood at 306.18 million, the lowest since comparable data became available in 2007, according to the preliminary data released by the Japan Tourism Agency. The figure includes people who may have been counted twice or more.

Although hotel occupancy improved at one point due to the government-subsidized "Go To Travel" campaign begun in July to boost the virus-hit domestic tourism sector, data showed the program could not weather the impact of the virus on stays at accommodations.

Ideas:

Its not surprising that the hotel occupancy rate decreased in 2020. But what's even more surprising is the actual number of those who did stay in hotels at  306.18 million.

Since are are only about 125 million people in Japan, it seems there were some who stayed at hotels more than once.

But as I survey websites such as Jalian.net it seems some hotels have really lowered there prices and some seem to have kept their prices almost the same.

For example the hotels that cater to the average business person have lowered their prices but those that target the upper middle class or the wealthy have not lowered their prices.

Most likely the higher prices hotels want to maintain their image as a higher prices hotel that targets the rich and the upper middle class.

Article:

The government halted the program on Dec. 28 as a resurgence in infection cases since November took a toll on the tourism industry. With no prospects for restarting the campaign, a growing number of hotels are being forced to close temporarily or go out of business.

In 2020, the cumulative total of domestic guests stood at 288.10 million, down 40.0% from a year earlier.

The number of such guests fell 81.6 percent in May from the same month the previous year before trending upward until November, which saw a smaller drop by 16.1 percent.

Ideas:

For example one hotel which I used to use a lot when I traveled to Yokohama, kept several of its hotels closed in the Yokohama area.

Most likely these might have been used for those who needed to isolate because of the virus situation.

And when looking at the hotel webpage and reservations for those that were open, they were special rates for those who wanted to use the hotels during the day, for example for telework and so on instead of going to their office.

But now it seems as of March 1 all of the hotels, of this hotel chain will be open for bookings.

However, as I check each hotel site for those staying, it appears there is no one staying at any of this companies hotels until mid April.

Of course not having a million Chinese tourists arriving each month has not been good for the hotel industry.

Article:

But the figure for December dropped 24.4 percent to 28.69 million, marking the first time in four months the rate of decline expanded, likely due to the suspension of the travel subsidy program and people refraining from making business trips in the wake of Japan's third wave of the pandemic.

As for foreign guests, the annual figure fell 84.4 percent to 18.08 million because of virus-induced travel curbs by Japan and other countries.

Ideas:

Maybe during the "Go to Travel" program there were more business people out and about traveling as they felt is was safe to travel around the country.

And then the program was suspended and people stopped traveling again.

As a previous article has stated most of those 18.08 were in January and February of 2020 and not much after that.

The hotel industry, whenever the virus ends has a long way to go to get back to normal, if ever.

But in the meantime, the government should do everything possible to help the tourism and hotel industry survive.

This is not the time for the common economic saying of "let the market" decide who will survive and who will die.

This is not normal times. Governments need to step and help as much as possible.

Have a nice day and be safe!