Hotel Prices: Updated April 29, 2025.

As prices rise, is battle heating up between domestic, foreign tourists for Japan hotels?

Article source: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250425/p2a/00m/0bu/018000c

Ideas:

Maybe it's the market economic way of increasing prices whenever demand increases a lot, as of course suppliers want to maximize profits whenever demand increases a lot. And of course with a record number of foreign tourists entering Japan, Japanese hotel suppliers are going to keep increasing the price and they know visitors need rooms.

Of course there is the problem of a labor shortage in Japan and also raw material costs keep increasing which contributes to the increase in prices as hotels pass on their costs to the customer.

With all due respect to the article, why does everything have to be labeled a competition, as why are domestic travelers and foreign travelers in a competition for rooms instead of maybe saying rooms are scare due to an increase in hotel visitors.

When the demand for a product is high of course there is going to be less availability like for airline tickets or I phones and so on.

At the same time, due to a shortage of labor in Japan, hotels might be increasing hotel fees to pass on their increase in wages to get the best possible talent and or making sure they are able to keep the talent they have now.

To be fair, what is the average rate per person? Is it a single room, a double room, a twin room or is it the composite of all of them together to make the average.

At the business hotel in Yokohama that I usually stay at is topping out at over 10,000 yen per night for a twin. Singles run around 7,500 yen and doubles over 8,000 yen per night.

It's quite possible, because many hotels and service businesses were hit hard by the pandemic and lost a a lot of revenue, that they might be trying to make up for their losses during the pandemic by charging higher than normal prices now.

Even if Japan does reach the 40 million mark for foreign tourists they still have a long way to go to match France or even Spain in the level of foreign visitors they get each year, but 40 million is still a very good start.

At the same time, there are those in Japan who think maybe Japan has too many foreign visitors now as over-tourism seems to be a common phrase used now in some tourist friendly places.

There is even the talk and the implementation of a tourist tax in Kyoto where there seems to be a  large number of foreign tourists, and some, not all, are not very polite with their trash or understanding Japanese customs or culture.

Prices almost never go down in a market economy except for maybe in Japan during its deflation period which might be a thing of the past now, as inflation keeps increasing and with a labor shortage and and with the cost of raw materials continuing to increase hotel prices and tourist places will see continued price increases. 

And then, again, the labor shortage is a real and serious situation in Japan that is making all companies as workers have a choice of more than one job and companies are aware of the fact  that they need to increase wages to get the best talent and or keep the talent they have now.

Unless there are concrete and enforceable rules against companies acting like a cartel, they will bend the rules or go as far as they can to maximize their profits and or get the sales they need.

Issuing a warning might not be enough as some of the hotels, if they were arrogant and flaunted the rules, they need to be made an example of so that other hotels don't do the same thing again.

But the luxury hotels might have government connections that might make them off limits and they might think they can whatever they want.

Have a nice day!