Kyoto City Tourism Association or DMO KYOTO announced that Japanese guest nights in September 2020 were down 23.9% year on year, but the monthly result recovered well to the 80% level a year ago. The recoveries for four months in a row was boosted by the Japanese government’s domestic travel recovery initiative ‘Go To Travel Campaign.’
International guest nights were still down 99.7%, as Japan practically refused entries from foreign countries and regions in September.
The average occupancy rate was 33.0%, 10.2 points higher than August (22.8%). While more hotels and ryokans reopened and supplied more rooms for five months in a row, they still had hard times because international guests were almost zero.
DMO Kyoto expects that recovery of Japanese guests will be promising, as travel from/to Tokyo was added in ‘’Go To Travel Campaign’ after October. Bookings on OTA after October are slightly down compared to a year ago, and DMO Kyoto expects that the trend will continue by the end of 2020.