From plush city stays to beach resorts, expensive hotels are opening across Japan in droves — and the trend for luxury lodgings isn’t showing signs of slowing down any time soon.
Just a few years ago, fears of a shortage of accommodation grew ahead of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics on the back of projections that 40 million tourists would visit. The hotel industry began expanding, but any sparkling new additions stood empty as the pandemic took hold and guests were greeted with quarantines.
Today, the challenges of unused Olympic hotels and COVID-19 travel restrictions are fading into memory, and they come amid an onslaught of luxury hotels across the country, some which are offering rooms with prices in the hundreds of thousands of yen per night. These aren’t just local businesses bolstering their brands, either: A high number of overseas hotel chains are also making their first foray into the Japanese market.