Japan's Love Hotels Being Tapped To Ease Accommodation Pinch

Above, a lighter from a Tokyo love hotel. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

With increased tourism to Japan, the demand for hotel rooms have gone up. Conventional hotels in the Kansai region are trying to meet the demand. To help ease the accommodation crunch, love hotels are being tapped.

According to an article in Japan Today:

TOKYO —Over the past several years, the number of visitors to Japan, and particularly the Kansai region, from Asian countries has steadily increased. The completion of the 300-meter-high Abeno Harukas, Japan’s tallest commercial building, and the opening up of a Harry Potter section at Universal Studios Japan have served as magnets to draw more foreign visitors, and this, reports Shukan Jitsuwa (Sept 11) has had the effect of raising the occupancy rate of the city’s hotels. As a result, not only are city hotels, but even budget and business hotels are finding themselves unable to meet demand. 

“By the weekend, we hotel operators get to talking. ‘Have you got any vacant rooms?’ they ask,” says a member of the Osaka Prefectural Association of Hotel Operators. “If the number of flights by those LLCs (low cost carriers) into Kansai International Airport increase any further—meaning more visitors from South Korea and China—the situation’s going to become huge mess as far as accommodations are concerned.” 

Not to pass up a business opportunity, the magazine reports, moves are afoot by people in the hotel industry to tap into the latent potential of the city’s love hotels. One of the ways to do this is to modify their exteriors, lobbies, and so on to make them resemble more conventional business hotels in appearance.

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