A growing number of hotels and inns across Japan are rethinking traditional hospitality by offering room-only services and encouraging guests to dine at nearby restaurants. This trend, which has gained momentum in recent years, reflects both the changing preferences of inbound tourists and mounting labor shortages in the hotel industry — while also aiming to revitalize local communities and businesses.
Guests Prefer Dining Out — and Hotels Are Adapting
Many foreign tourists now prefer exploring local cuisine outside their accommodations. This shift has encouraged hotels, especially in hot spring resorts and popular tourist destinations, to stop offering in-house dinners and instead promote local eateries.
While this approach reduces the workload for hotels struggling with staff shortages, it also boosts surrounding restaurants and the wider community. However, some regions are struggling to keep up with demand, as there are not enough restaurants to serve the growing number of visitors.
Nipponia Hotel Ise Kawasaki Merchant Town: A Decentralized Stay Experience
One example is the newly opened Nipponia Hotel Ise Kawasaki Merchant Town in Ise, Mie Prefecture. Located near the famous Ise Shrine, the hotel is a “decentralized hotel” that uses renovated traditional merchant houses and storehouses scattered across the historic Kawasaki district.
Rather than serving dinner, the hotel introduces guests to neighborhood restaurants and izakaya pubs.
“Encounters with great restaurants increase the value of traveling,” said a hotel official.
By encouraging guests to dine locally, the hotel helps increase tourism spending and the time visitors spend in the area. Nearby restaurant owners, like Hirotoshi Kudo, welcome the move, saying it has already brought more customers and could promote the district as a vibrant travel destination.
Hakuba Happo Yamabuki Shokudo: Supporting Inns in Hakuba
In Hakuba, Nagano Prefecture — a ski and hot spring hotspot — the newly opened Hakuba Happo Yamabuki Shokudo restaurant offers meals for guests staying at room-only inns and guesthouses. It is located within Hakuba Marukin Ryokan, a long-standing traditional inn.
Owner Takayoshi Maruyama decided to rent out part of the inn to the restaurant to ease the burden on his family from preparing meals for guests.
“We would have been worn out if we continued to offer meals by ourselves,” he said.
The restaurant is operated by Zukutochie, a local tourism consulting firm, and uses QR code ordering to save labor. Serving local specialties like ramen and hot pot with Shinshu miso, the restaurant now attracts more than 3,000 visitors a month during peak season.
Yutaka Wada, co-head of Zukutochie, hopes this model can help aging inn owners sustain their businesses while keeping ownership within the community.
“I want this system to become a model case of allowing locals to remain as the center of the community while holding on to their properties and capital,” Wada said.
Similar Shifts in Takayama, Gifu Prefecture
The trend is also spreading in Takayama, Gifu Prefecture. According to the Hida Takayama Ryokan Hotel Cooperative, many new guesthouses in the area have stopped serving meals, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, limited restaurant availability remains a challenge. Popular eateries that cater to foreign visitors are often overcrowded, while smaller traditional restaurants are already busy serving locals.
Minoru Nakahata, managing director of the cooperative, said he often sees tourists resorting to convenience stores and supermarkets for food.
“I hope there will be more places that can accept them,” he said.
Why This Trend Is Growing
A 2017 survey by the Japan Tourism Agency found that 32% of hotels and inns in hot spring resorts offered room-only services — a number that rose to 51.9% among facilities actively targeting inbound tourists.
This shift is also driven by severe labor shortages. A 2023 survey by Teikoku Databank found that 60% of hotels and inns reported a lack of both full-time and part-time workers.
Yoshinori Takatsu of Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting said the trend has accelerated since the pandemic, partly because foreign tourists prefer to eat out and because serving meals yields low profit margins — especially when meals are served in guest rooms, as is common in traditional inns.
“It is possible to run an inn with a small number of people if the labor force involving meals can be cut,” Takatsu noted.
A Win-Win Approach — If Restaurants Can Keep Up
As hotels reduce their meal offerings to save labor and appeal to tourists’ dining preferences, the success of this model will depend on whether local restaurants can meet rising demand.
If done well, this separation of lodging and dining could revitalize local economies, preserve traditional inns, and enhance the cultural experience for travelers — while easing the pressure on Japan’s overstretched hospitality industry.
source:https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/09/08/japan/room-only-accommodations-increasing-in-japan/
