Tourism Niseko to introduce accommodation tax

[thomas]

Following the example of several other municipalities, the mountain resort of Niseko will impose an accommodation fee of up to 2,000 JPY per night on hotel and minpaku private lodging stays from November 2024.

The non-statutory tax is expected to generate 162 million JPY annually in revenue for the local government, with the funds allocated to improving local transportation and other measures to improve tourism.

Visitors will be required to pay between 100 to 2,000 JPY per night based on their nightly room charge, which is divided into five brackets starting from less than 5,001 to 100,000 JPY and over per person. School-related trips will be exempt from the tax. Given the increase in foreign tourists, the town of Niseko had originally planned to introduce a fixed-rate tax that would collect 2 per cent of the room charge, but changed strategy in consideration of the administrative burden on operators. Accommodation taxes have already been introduced in Tokyo as well as Osaka and Fukuoka prefectures, and six municipalities including Kanazawa and Nagasaki, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

Hokkaido's Niseko to introduce lodging tax of up to 2,000 yen a night - The Mainichi

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Visitors to Hokkaido's Niseko mountain resort will be liable to pay up to 2,000 yen ($14) per night on hotel and

mainichi.jp

Hokkaido's Niseko to introduce lodging tax of up to 2,000 yen a night

Visitors to Hokkaido's Niseko mountain resort will be liable to pay up to 2,000 yen ($14) per night on hotel and "minpaku" private lodging stays under a new accommodation tax scheme approved by Japan's internal affairs minister.

english.kyodonews.net

 

[nice gaijin]

100 yen I could stomach, but a 2,000 yen per night surcharge seems like a lot... I guess if I'm paying 100,000 per night for the hotel I wouldn't care as much though.

I'm fortunate to be able to day trip to get my skiing in, I try to go just about every week while there's good snow on the ground

 

[thomas]

100 yen I could stomach, but a 2,000 yen per night surcharge seems like a lot... I guess if I'm paying 100,000 per night for the hotel I wouldn't care as much though.

And that's what it's amounting to meanwhile:

The price hikes extend to accommodations in the area, with a private lodging operator in Rankoshi, a town in the Niseko area, saying he raised his nightly rates by more than 10 percent from 88,000 yen to 99,000 yen due to the weaker yen. "Other places around here have also been raising prices," he said, adding that his property is fully booked until mid-March.

In one restaurant, an Australian woman said she felt satisfied after spending 10,000 yen ($66) on sushi. A Chinese visitor remarked that while it was not cheap, the prices were reasonable considering how expensive things are in Europe.

Tourism boom sends prices soaring at Japan's famed Niseko ski resort - The Mainichi

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- A record influx of overseas visitors has descended on the famed Niseko ski resort on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, driving foo

mainichi.jp

 

[Petaris]

Why do I feel like they are just cherry picking responses they get to support their stance?

 

[Lothor]

Why do I feel like they are just cherry picking responses they get to support their stance?

That is often the case with Japanese news, but we are talking about people with enough spare money to fly several thousand kilometres to slide down mountains, so I suspect that most tourists at Niseko won't be too bothered.

 

[Petaris]

I don't know about that. I fly half way around the world with my family and we have to pick and choose what we do based on the cost. Especially when you have a family and are not just solo or a couple it will get very expensive very quickly with these types of changes. Japan is already very expensive to fly to so adding even more onto the top just means that we will end up skipping more and more of these places when choosing what to visit.