Japan Off-PeakIs Okinawa crowded in December? What the official hotel data shows
By Japan Off-Peak (TechAthletes) · 2026-10-09 · Data: Japan Tourism Agency, counted by us (method)
"Is Okinawa crowded in December?" is the first thing Google's autocomplete suggested for "is okinawa crowded in" when we checked on 9 October 2026. We can't count people on a beach, but we can count hotel stays. So we went through three years of Japan's official hotel statistics for Okinawa Prefecture.
Short answer: December is one of Okinawa's quiet months for hotels. In 2025 its hotels and inns had their lowest monthly room occupancy in December (51.9%) and their second-lowest number of guests per day, after January. Visitors from abroad were below average too, but the two official counts of them disagree on how far below.
December, three years in a row
A guest night is one person staying one night, so the figures below are guest nights per day, not people. We divided each month's total by its number of days so that months of different lengths compare fairly. "The average month" below is the mean of the twelve monthly per-day figures.
| December | Guest nights / day, all | Residents of Japan | Foreign (all lodgings) | Foreign (hotels with 10+ staff) | Room occupancy | December's rank, all guests |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 67,219 | 55,126 | 12,093 | 7,514 | 48.2% | 12 of 12 |
| 2024 | 81,822 | 61,339 | 20,482 | 12,009 | 49.8% | 8 of 12 |
| 2025 | 74,557 | 57,791 | 16,766 | 14,201 | 51.9% | 11 of 12 |
On all guests, December ranked 12th of 12 months in 2023, 8th in 2024 and 11th in 2025. In 2025 it was at 80.4% of the average month, and the busiest month, August, had 1.61 times as many guests per day.
Most of Okinawa's guests live in Japan: 77.5% of guest nights in December 2025. The estimate for all guests is also more precise than the one for foreign guests: the agency's standard error for Okinawa in December 2025 was 5.57% for all guests and 10.21% for foreign guests.
The whole of 2025, month by month
| 2025 | Guest nights / day, all | Residents of Japan | Foreign (all lodgings) | Foreign (10+ staff) | Room occupancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 71,842 | 51,551 | 20,291 | 13,730 | 52.5% |
| Feb | 89,182 | 67,073 | 22,109 | 13,098 | 62.1% |
| Mar | 97,194 | 74,900 | 22,294 | 13,189 | 59.6% |
| Apr | 88,254 | 62,232 | 26,021 | 17,669 | 60.5% |
| May | 83,850 | 58,136 | 25,714 | 17,709 | 56.2% |
| Jun | 87,930 | 60,449 | 27,480 | 19,005 | 58.8% |
| Jul | 104,419 | 76,064 | 28,355 | 18,525 | 64.4% |
| Aug | 119,707 | 86,890 | 32,817 | 21,076 | 66.4% |
| Sep | 100,004 | 70,198 | 29,806 | 19,508 | 62.6% |
| Oct | 106,971 | 75,067 | 31,905 | 20,876 | 66.6% |
| Nov | 88,820 | 69,787 | 19,034 | 15,982 | 61.3% |
| Dec | 74,557 | 57,791 | 16,766 | 14,201 | 51.9% |
- January was quieter still. It had 71,842 guest nights per day, against 74,557 in December.
- Monthly occupancy was lowest in December. Occupancy across all types of lodging was 51.9%, the lowest month of 2025. The highest was Oct (66.6%).
Foreign visitors: two official counts that disagree
The agency publishes foreign guest nights in two ways: for all lodgings (table 2), and by nationality for hotels with 10 or more staff (reference table 1). For Okinawa in December they point in different directions:
- All lodgings: December 2025 had the fewest foreign guests per day of any month in 2025, 66.5% of the average month, and 18% fewer than in December 2024.
- Hotels with 10+ staff: December 2025 was 9th of 12 months, at 83.3% of the average month, and up 18% on December 2024. The quietest month on this count was Feb.
The implied gap, all lodgings minus hotels with 10+ staff, is in lodgings with fewer than 10 staff: about 8,473 foreign guest nights per day in December 2024 and 2,565 in December 2025. The statistics can't tell us whether that fall is real or sampling variation. The agency's standard error for Okinawa's foreign figures was between 10.08% and 21.69% across the months of 2025. That is below its 30% warning level but still wide. What both counts agree on: December 2025 was below the average month for foreign guest nights.
Who the foreign visitors were
Nationality is available only for hotels with 10 or more staff.
| December, hotels with 10+ staff | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Taiwan 28.9% | South Korea 23.1% | United States 11.5% | Hong Kong 11.2% | China 7.4% | Singapore 3.2% |
| 2025 | Taiwan 33.9% | South Korea 20.2% | Hong Kong 10.5% | United States 8.1% | Other countries (combined) 5.5% | China 4.7% |
"Other countries (combined)" groups every country outside the 20 the agency lists separately. The agency marks the United States figure for December 2024 as having a standard error of 30% or more, so treat that one as approximate.
In mid-November 2025 China's foreign ministry, followed by its culture and tourism ministry, advised Chinese citizens to avoid travelling to Japan (Xinhua via SCIO). In Okinawa's hotels with 10+ staff, guests from mainland China averaged 885 nights per day in December 2024 and 665 in December 2025, after 1,357 in November 2025. These figures alone can't show what caused the change. Mainland China was a small share of Okinawa's foreign guests in both years (7.4% and 4.7% in hotels with 10+ staff).
Weather
From the Japan Meteorological Agency's 1991–2020 normals for its Naha station:
- Average daily high 21.5°C, low 16.8°C (mean 19.0°C).
- 110.0 mm of rain in the month.
- 107.4 hours of sunshine, about half of August's 206.3 hours.
January is a little cooler (mean 17.3°C) and had even fewer hotel guests in 2025.
What this means if you're planning
- If you want quieter hotels: December and January were Okinawa's two quietest months for hotel stays in 2025. Our Okinawa page has every month.
- If you want beach weather: December is mild but not summer. The normals above are for Naha only.
- If you're going for the holidays: the statistics are monthly, so they can't show whether the end of December is busier than the start.
Limits of this data
- These are counts for the whole of Okinawa Prefecture, including the outer islands.
- Hotel nights don't count day-trippers, cruise passengers who sleep on board, or people staying with friends.
- "Foreign" means guests with no address in Japan. Foreign residents are counted with residents of Japan.
Sources
- Japan Tourism Agency, Overnight Travel Statistics Survey, confirmed results for 2023, 2024 and 2025: table 2 (guest nights, all facilities), table 8 (room occupancy), reference table 1 (nationality, hotels with 10+ staff) and reference tables 2 and 3 (standard error rates). Downloaded from mlit.go.jp/kankocho. We edited and calculated the figures ourselves.
- Japan Meteorological Agency, climate normals for Naha (1991–2020), retrieved 9 October 2026.
- The calculation script is
analysis/a24_okinawa_december.pyin our repository; our method page explains the per-day counts.