Japan Tourism Agency announced that the total number of guest nights was down 58.4% year on year to 26.3 million in August 2020 (preliminary report), which were divided into 26 million Japanese guest nights (-51.5%) and 230,000 international guest nights (-97.6%).
The monthly result of Japanese guest nights worsened from a 47.9% reduction in July 2020, though the government’s tourism recovery initiative ‘Go To Travel Campaign’ started in late July.
The average occupancy rate was still low with 32.1%, but improved from 29.6% in July: 28.6% for ryokan (-21.8 points), 34.2% for resort hotel (-36.7 points),37.5% for budget hotel (-42.1 points) and 28.2% for city hotel (-54.8 points), as the graph below shows.
By prefecture in July (secondary report), the biggest reduction was found in Tokyo with a 77% reduction to 1.5 million guest nights maybe because Tokyo with much more COVID-19 cases than other prefectures was excluded from the government’s campaign. Okinawa improved to a 66.7% reduction to 1.08 million guest nights.