What Comes to Mind When You Think of Hotels and Places to Stay on a Trip?
A family trip.
A holiday with friends.
A place you visited with your partner.
Which country were you in when you stayed at that hotel or other accommodation?
Your memories of a stay may be intertwined with the scenery you saw and the time you spent with someone.
Across Japan, hotels and ryokan—traditional Japanese inns—are also places where travel memories are made. How have these places changed through the pandemic?
Using the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s Report on Public Health Administration and Services and the Japan Tourism Agency’s Accommodation Survey, we will compare guest nights in 2019, before the pandemic; 2021, during it; and 2025, after it, through a map and a data card.
As you look for places you have visited or would like to visit, shall we explore together how Japan’s hotels and ryokan have changed?
Explore Japan’s Hotels and Ryokan on the Map
This map uses accommodation figures from 2019, 2021, and 2025 to show changes through the pandemic.
The “Recovery rate” shown initially indicates the level of guest nights in 2025, with 2019 set to 100. A value above 100 means guest nights exceeded the 2019 level.
Choose the buttons for “Total guest nights”, “Share of guest nights for foreign nationals”, or “Establishments” to change the map’s colors. The share indicates the proportion of total guest nights accounted for by foreign nationals. Select a prefecture—one of Japan’s administrative divisions—to see its detailed figures.
For room occupancy, guest rooms, or simple lodging establishments, open “More indicators” (詳しい指標). You can also search by prefecture name, use voice search, or move to a regional map.
Start with a place you have visited or somewhere you would like to go.
How Have Guest Nights Changed across Japan?
Total guest nights across Japan fell from 595,921,530 in 2019 to 317,773,820 in 2021. They then rose to 661,105,500 in 2025.
The recovery rate for 2025 compared with 2019 was 110.9%. Across Japan as a whole, guest nights exceeded the pre-pandemic level.
“Guest nights” does not mean the number of individual people who stayed. One person staying for three nights counts as three guest nights. If the same person stays several times in a year, each stay is counted.
Switch between the data card’s tabs to see the breakdown of guest nights, the numbers of hotels and ryokan and their guest rooms, and licenses issued and closures across the lodging industry as a whole.
After exploring the changes across Japan, return to the map to look for differences between prefectures.
What I Noticed While Making the Map
Looking at the map, I noticed differences between prefectures in how guest nights recovered and how the share accounted for by foreign nationals changed.
Take a look at the changes in each area that the national figures alone cannot reveal.
From places you remember to places you would like to visit next.
Shall we explore how hotels and ryokan in Japan have changed, moving between the map and the data card?
Sources: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Report on Public Health Administration and Services; Japan Tourism Agency, Accommodation Survey.
- Accommodation figures cover the calendar years 2019, 2021, and 2025 (January–December).
- Figures for establishments, guest rooms, licenses issued, and closures cover fiscal years 2019, 2021, and 2024.
- Guest nights count each guest for each night of their stay. One person staying for three nights counts as three guest nights.
- The maps and data cards use the Japanese labels “日本人” (“Japanese”) and “外国人” (“foreign nationals”) to reflect the statistical categories. Guest nights for Japanese nationals are calculated by subtracting guest nights for foreign nationals from total guest nights.
- The recovery rate is calculated as total guest nights in 2025 ÷ total guest nights in 2019 × 100.