Yoshiharu Hoshino is known as a maverick in the hospitality industry, an innovative entrepreneur with a progressive management style who transformed his family-owned inn into one of the nation’s largest and best-known operators of luxury hotels and ryokan (traditional inns).
Riding on a boom of inbound visitors in recent years, Hoshino Resorts Inc. had been steadily expanding its footprint in both Japan and overseas — until COVID-19 hit.
During the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, seven of the 42 properties it operated were temporarily closed as both domestic and international travel came to an abrupt halt. Five Hoshino Resorts properties that had been planned to open during March and June were postponed. And during April and May, when the country’s first state of emergency was declared, profits plunged by 80% to 90%.