Under the government's Go To Travel campaign, which offers discounts of up to 35% per person per night, luxury hotels and inns that can offer larger discounts have become popular, causing some affordable lodging facilities to voice their disappointment.
A room at Blue in Green, a chalet in Hokuto, Yamanashi Prefecture, located near the Yatsugatake mountain range, costs about 10,000 yen per night. However, the first weekend of the capital's inclusion in the tourism campaign brought only a single reservation to the establishment.
"If the campaign had provided the flat rate of, for example, 5,000, yen instead of setting a discount rate, even accommodations like ours could have benefited," said Tsutomu Kobayashi, the 57-year-old owner of Blue in Green.
Akita Onsen Satomi, a hot spring Japanese inn near central Akita City, has only half as many guests as usual. Although the inn has seen a recovery in the number of individual guests, groups of guests have been slow to return.
"Luxury inns are gaining in popularity," said Ryo Shimokawa, 40, the Akita inn's executive. He goes on to say that he hopes the campaign will continue through to the tourism season in spring as the number of tourists to the area generally falls in winter because of snow.
When travel to and from Tokyo was added to the Go To Travel campaign on Thursday, Wise Owl Hostels Tokyo in Chuo Ward, Tokyo, resumed operations following a six-month closure. However, a hostel official said, "We don't have any reservations from tourists."
The hostel was popular among foreign travelers prior to the novel coronavirus outbreak.
"I'd like the government to allow foreign visitors to enter the country as soon as possible," said Yoshimi Maekawa, an executive officer of the hostel's operating company Wise Owl Inc.
The Japan Tourism Agency plans to allocate the budget for the Go To Travel program to small and midsize businesses substantially. The program is currently scheduled to last through the end of January next year, but the discount period for school trips, for which many small and midsize accommodations are used, will be until the end of March,.
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