Japan upgrades hotels to cater to West

Japan upgrades hotels to cater to West
By admin


Japan will provide a subsidy to cover half the cost for traditional hotels to upgrade to meet the needs of Western tourists.

The traditional Japanese-style lodgings, or Ryokan, with low occupancy by foreign visitors, can take advantage of this plan to attract non-Japanese tourists, public broadcaster NHK reported.

The subsidy will cover 50 per cent of the cost of installing equipment for wi-fi access, Western-style toilets and signboards in multiple languages.

The measure is aimed at boosting international tourism by adapting Japanese hotels to the tastes and needs of Western tourists, in order to meet the government target of 30 million foreign visitors by 2020.

The government is also seeking to increase tourism in rural areas of the country by improving infrastructure and services.

Image credit: www.ryokan-experience.com

Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

    Latest comments
    1. Might help if regular hotels employed people who can speak more than 3 words of English. Even a large 3 star hotel in central Oaska (I stayed in 2 weeks ago) had about 30% foreign guests and most of the front desk staff didn’t speak any English at all. One of them didn’t know what “check out” meant!

      From the three 3-star hotels (plus 1 Ryokan) I stayed at in Japan in November, only 1 of them had a single English channel & it was CNN. Yet hey all advertised in English that they had “cable TV” !! One only had 6 channels in total so what is free to air if 6 is defined as cable?

      Here in Australia we have SBS as free to air with foreign languages. It seems in Japan they dont even have cable channels in English.

    2. Might help if regular hotels employed people who can speak more than 3 words of English. Even a large 3 star hotel in central Oaska (I stayed in 2 weeks ago) had about 30% foreign guests and most of the front desk staff didn’t speak any English at all. One of them didn’t know what “check out” meant!

      From the three 3-star hotels (plus 1 Ryokan) I stayed at in Japan in November, only 1 of them had a single English channel & it was CNN. Yet hey all advertised in English that they had “cable TV” !! One only had 6 channels in total so what is free to air if 6 is defined as cable?

      Here in Australia we have SBS as free to air with foreign languages. It seems in Japan they dont even have cable channels in English.

hotels japan ryokan tourism

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