Ky Kyoto hotels hit new high of 63.7%

A post-coronaviruses epidemic has been confirmed by the Kyoto City Tourism Association in October, and the room occupancy rate at major hotels in this ancient Japanese capital city has reached a new high of 63.7%.

The figure was up 9.3 percentage points from September. The Japanese government loosened border controls and introduced a domestic travel subsidy program have helped raise the occupancy rate, it is believed. Tourism in Kyoto has not fully recovered to the level before the epidemic, despite the fact that the figure was lower than the 86.1% from October 2019.

The October rate was slightly higher than the previous record, since the COVID-19 virus began to spread at 63.3% in November 2020, during the Go To Travel subsidy campaign.

Foreign nationals accounted for 13.7% of all hotel guests - a rise from 3.9% in the previous month. There was a 12.4% increase in the number of Japanese guests in September.

In October, the occupancy rate at major Japanese-style inns in Kyoto stood at 60.0% 0.2 points higher than in the previous month. While inns continued to accommodate guests on both September and October, the number of individual tourists did not grow much, making the occupancy rate far below the 70% in October 2019.

The survey was conducted on 116 major hotels and 24 major Japanese-style inns in the city. The tourism association believes that room occupancy rates will grow due to the travel subsidy program raising demand, as well as the effects of the fall foliage season and the year-end and New Year holidays.