Japan Off-PeakRyokan were about half as full as city hotels in 2025: occupancy by prefecture and month
By Japan Off-Peak (TechAthletes) · 2026-10-06 · Data: Japan Tourism Agency, counted by us (method)
At national level, it's already known that Japan's traditional inns fill fewer of their rooms than city hotels. HotelBank reported this from the agency's preliminary 2025 figures. What we haven't found laid out in English is how that gap looks in each of the 47 prefectures, and in which months each prefecture's ryokan are fullest and emptiest. That's what this article adds, from the confirmed 2025 figures.
The headline numbers
The Japan Tourism Agency publishes room occupancy by type of lodging: the share of rooms that were actually used over the month. For Japan as a whole, 2025 looked like this:
- City hotels: 74.1% of rooms occupied.
- Ryokan: 38.2%.
- Small lodgings (簡易宿所: guesthouses, hostels, capsule hotels, mountain huts and similar): 29.6%.
- All types together: 61.6%.
We checked all 47 prefectures. In none of them did ryokan occupancy for the year exceed city-hotel occupancy. The gap was largest in Saitama (21.1% against 78.2%), Nagano (27.2% against 76.1%) and Aichi (30.8% against 72.4%), with Fukuoka close behind (31.3% against 72.4%).
Month by month, nationally
| Month | Ryokan | City hotels | Small lodgings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 33.0% | 66.9% | 25.1% |
| Feb | 36.6% | 71.8% | 27.1% |
| Mar | 38.2% | 73.9% | 28.6% |
| Apr | 35.3% | 76.1% | 27.7% |
| May | 38.5% | 75.0% | 29.7% |
| Jun | 35.0% | 72.5% | 28.2% |
| Jul | 37.2% | 71.6% | 32.8% |
| Aug | 45.7% | 75.3% | 39.1% |
| Sep | 38.8% | 75.6% | 30.5% |
| Oct | 41.8% | 80.3% | 30.9% |
| Nov | 42.1% | 77.6% | 29.4% |
| Dec | 35.1% | 72.9% | 24.5% |
| Year | 38.2% | 74.1% | 29.6% |
Three patterns stand out:
- Ryokan peak in August (45.7%), city hotels in October (80.3%). A likely reason is that ryokan depend more on Japanese summer holidays, and city hotels on autumn travel and business trips. The statistics don't record why people stay.
- January is the low point for both ryokan (33.0%) and city hotels (66.9%).
- Small lodgings bottom out in December (24.5%) and peak in August (39.1%).
Prefecture by prefecture
Annual occupancy for ryokan and city hotels, with the months when ryokan were least and most full. Where two months tie exactly, both are shown.
Use it to pick months: a prefecture's lowest ryokan month is when inns there had the most free rooms on average. Its highest month is when inns there were busiest on average.
| Prefecture | Ryokan (year) | City hotels (year) | Ryokan's lowest month | Ryokan's highest month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hokkaido | 43.9% | 74.5% | Apr (29.6%) | Jul (56.3%) |
| Aomori | 41.8% | 60.4% | Jan (26.0%) | Oct (57.2%) |
| Iwate | 36.8% | 68.9% | Dec (28.5%) | Aug and Oct (47.0%) |
| Miyagi | 46.7% | 68.9% | Jan (37.0%) | Oct and Nov (55.5%) |
| Akita | 36.2% | 49.7% | Dec (23.9%) | Oct (51.6%) |
| Yamagata | 40.2% | 58.2% | Apr (29.5%) | Aug (51.9%) |
| Fukushima | 37.1% | 46.8% | Jan (27.5%) | Oct (45.8%) |
| Ibaraki | 33.2% | 66.6% | Jan (26.0%) | Aug (48.9%) |
| Tochigi | 44.9% | 67.5% | Jan (34.5%) | Nov (57.2%) |
| Gunma | 45.9% | 53.6% | Dec (37.5%) | Aug (52.9%) |
| Saitama | 21.1% | 78.2% | Dec (16.8%) | Apr (25.8%) |
| Chiba | 42.6% | 77.0% | Apr (32.1%) | Aug (54.2%) |
| Tokyo | 41.7% | 77.2% | Feb (36.2%) | Aug (53.6%) |
| Kanagawa | 49.0% | 73.0% | Jul (41.9%) | Nov (56.6%) |
| Niigata | 28.4% | 62.3% | Apr (22.3%) | Aug (35.5%) |
| Toyama | 33.6% | 71.0% | Jan (24.2%) | Aug (43.4%) |
| Ishikawa | 35.2% | 69.7% | Feb (26.9%) | Nov (43.9%) |
| Fukui | 26.8% | 56.0% | Jan (18.1%) | Aug (40.1%) |
| Yamanashi | 34.4% | 50.2% | Jan (26.1%) | Aug (50.3%) |
| Nagano | 27.2% | 76.1% | Jun (22.3%) | Aug (38.7%) |
| Gifu | 41.5% | 66.7% | Jun (34.5%) | Aug (53.4%) |
| Shizuoka | 42.4% | 68.3% | Jun (35.6%) | Mar (50.6%) |
| Aichi | 30.8% | 72.4% | Jun (25.3%) | Aug (39.2%) |
| Mie | 39.8% | 73.1% | Jun (32.2%) | Nov (51.7%) |
| Shiga | 36.5% | 72.4% | Jun (30.3%) | Oct (43.9%) |
| Kyoto | 41.7% | 77.5% | Jan (27.9%) | Oct (53.9%) |
| Osaka | 49.0% | 79.4% | Jul (40.8%) | Mar (58.2%) |
| Hyogo | 40.0% | 72.2% | Jun (33.0%) | Nov (51.6%) |
| Nara | 33.4% | 69.0% | Feb (21.8%) | Nov (44.5%) |
| Wakayama | 36.7% | 68.4% | Dec (27.5%) | May (43.8%) |
| Tottori | 45.3% | 67.1% | Jan (35.4%) | Nov (53.4%) |
| Shimane | 41.2% | 68.8% | Jan (27.0%) | Nov (55.7%) |
| Okayama | 21.2% | 60.5% | Jan (15.8%) | Aug (28.4%) |
| Hiroshima | 35.0% | 73.8% | Jan (23.5%) | Nov (46.3%) |
| Yamaguchi | 42.1% | 60.2% | Jun (34.7%) | Nov (49.1%) |
| Tokushima | 26.9% | 55.9% | Jun (18.4%) | Nov (32.6%) |
| Kagawa | 54.0% | 78.0% | Jan and Dec (45.3%) | Nov (65.1%) |
| Ehime | 48.0% | 62.8% | Jun (36.7%) | Nov (58.0%) |
| Kochi | 36.0% | 70.8% | Jan (20.7%) | Nov (48.0%) |
| Fukuoka | 31.3% | 72.4% | Jun (23.6%) | Oct (36.5%) |
| Saga | 37.7% | 69.4% | Jul (25.0%) | Mar (47.6%) |
| Nagasaki | 39.8% | 72.1% | Jan (29.3%) | Aug (47.3%) |
| Kumamoto | 41.9% | 77.2% | Jun (32.9%) | Nov (48.6%) |
| Oita | 43.3% | 71.0% | Jul (28.7%) | Mar (52.9%) |
| Miyazaki | 43.1% | 58.6% | Jun (28.2%) | Nov (57.2%) |
| Kagoshima | 35.7% | 60.1% | Jul (27.1%) | Nov (43.9%) |
| Okinawa | 43.6% | 68.2% | Dec (21.0%) | Sep (55.0%) |
A few examples from the table:
- Kyoto: ryokan averaged 41.7% for the year against 77.5% for city hotels. Kyoto's ryokan were emptiest in January (27.9%) and fullest in October (53.9%).
- Nagano: ryokan were only 27.2% occupied on average, and 22.3% in June. That fits the June finding in our article on double-quiet months.
- Okinawa: ryokan ranged from 21.0% in December to 55.0% in September.
What this means for travellers
- If city hotels look full, ryokan are worth checking. These are prefecture-wide figures that include onsen towns and rural inns, so they don't tell you about ryokan in a particular city centre. But in every prefecture, ryokan rooms were used less often than city-hotel rooms, by 7.7 to 57.1 percentage points.
- These are monthly averages. The statistics don't split by day of the week, so a month with low average occupancy can still be full on particular days.
- January is the least-full month for both ryokan and city hotels nationally. We have no price data, so check rates directly.
Why ryokan occupancy is so low
The statistics don't explain the reasons, so treat these as possibilities rather than findings:
- Small, family-run inns may open fewer days, or keep some rooms out of use.
- Demand clusters on weekends and holidays.
What this data can't tell you
- Occupancy is a monthly average across all days and all inns. It says nothing about a particular inn or date.
- "Ryokan" means facilities the survey classifies as Japanese-style inns (旅館): mainly Japanese-style rooms and facilities.
- One year. 2025 included the Osaka Expo (13 April to 13 October).
- No prices.
Sources and method
- Source: Japan Tourism Agency (観光庁), Overnight Travel Statistics Survey (宿泊旅行統計調査), 2025 full-year confirmed results, table 8 (第8表), room occupancy by type of lodging (旅館・シティホテル・簡易宿所). File: 002010340.xlsx, downloaded 29 September 2026.
- Values: the occupancy rates are the agency's published figures, read directly from the table. We compared and ranked them, but didn't recalculate them. The agency doesn't publish standard errors for occupancy by type of lodging.
More on the method page.