Japan Tourism Agency reported that the total number of guest nights in 2019 was up 1.0% to 543 million, comprising 442 million Japanese guest nights (-0.4%) and record-high 101 million international guest nights (+7.6%).
The top prefecture was Tokyo with 66.2 million guest nights (+0.1%), followed by Osaka with 44.5 million guest nights (+11.5%), Hokkaido with 36.9 million guest nights (+4.5%), Okinawa with 27 million guest nights (+0.9%) and Chiba with 26.8 million guest nights (+4.9%), as unchanged from the previous year.
As far as international guest nights are concerned, the top prefecture was also Tokyo with 24.7 million guest nights (+6.6%), followed by Osaka with 17 million guest nights (+12.6%), Hokkaido with 8.5 million guest nights (+2.7%), Kyoto with 8 million guest nights (+27.1%) and Okinawa with 6 million guest nights (-3.1%).
Guest nights in three major urban areas were 62.2 million in total (+11.5%), accounting for 60% or higher of the total, while those in local areas were 39 million (+1.9%). Year-on-year reductions of international guest nights were seen in many local prefectures.
By international national, guest nights of South Korea largely reduced by 25.1% to 8.95 million because of the political conflict, but guest nights of all of other markets resulted in year-on-year increases. Guest nights of U.K. particularly increased by 48.9% to 1.81 million due to the Rugby World Cup 2019.
Although Europe was smaller market than Southeast Asia in terms of the number of visitors, it is true that several European markets had more guest nights than Southeast Asian markets, which may represent a different travel style between Europe and Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, the occupancy rate was up 0.9%to 62.1% on average: 58.6% for resort hotels (+0.3 points), 39.5% for ryokans (+0.7 points), 79.4% for city hotels (-0.8 points) and 75.4% for budget hotels (-0.1 point).
