KYOTO–Desperate to thin out tourist crowds here, the city government will slap visitors with an accommodation tax of up to 10,000 yen ($68.3) per person per night, starting March 1.
The levy, an increase from 1,000 yen, will be used to improve city infrastructure and measures to ease congestion.
Officials explained that the 10,000-yen levy will apply to hotel stays costing 100,000 yen or more per night under the staggered tax system.
The new tax rate per person per night will remain at 200 yen for stays under 6,000 yen. For stays ranging in price from 6,000 yen to less than 20,000 yen, the levy will increase from 200 yen to 400 yen.
For stays ranging in price from 20,000 yen to less than 50,000 yen, the levy will increase from 500 yen to 1,000 yen. For stays of between 50,000 yen and less than 100,000 yen, the rate will jump from 1,000 yen to 4,000 yen. For stays costing 100,000 yen or more, the levy will go up from 1,000 yen to 10,000 yen.
by 90smule
46 comments
If someone is spending ¥100,000 a night on a hoteI I think they can afford the accommodation fee lol.
This includes Japanese residents and citizens as well?
Honestly, a pretty smart move in theory. Let’s see how it is implemented.
This applies to everyone including Japanese since it’s just a tax tacked onto hotel fees, right?
Great! Use it to improve the public transport!
(Crickets…)
So stay in Osaka and take a 30 minute train ride.
Is this for all of Kyoto, or just the touristed districts?
I’m a tourist, and I honestly feel they should implement this kinda stuff more. Even do a paid visa for all I care.
Been coming here over the past years. First time was in 2016. Last year and this year, I feel like its become so incredibly touristy to a point I don’t enjoy it as much as I used to. This obviously applies mainly to the big three cities.
I knownots hypocritical, because I am a tourist myself …but I do feel like its too overcrowded at the moment.
If Japan would let all tourists pay for a $50 visa, it might slow down the tourism enough and they would still make bank. Hell, I would even pay $100 for a tourist visa.
Japan doesn’t have an over tourism problem.
It has an over concentration of tourists problem.
The vast majority of foreign tourists who visit Japan go to just a handful of the 47 prefectures.
Japan should be promoting the other prefectures.
See a map of tourist distribution in this article.
[Rexby: “How to Avoid Overtourism in Japan (2025)” by Tony Xia](https://www.rexby.com/YamaTrips.Japan/t/how-to-avoid-overtourism-in-japan-2025)
Edit: I love that Reddit doesn’t show the comments from the trolls that I keep seeing in notifications. I don’t need their relentless negativity in my life. 😆
Wild Kyoto has so much flowing in and yet never enough to improve infrastructure… Where does it all go…
I doubt this is going to thin out the crowds much, but if it means more income for the city, great.
Tax your fucking temples
>Officials explained that the 10,000-yen levy will apply to hotel stays costing 100,000 yen or more per night under the staggered tax system.
Lol
That’s very necessary.
I went to Kyoto last month and my good the whole town is packed. More before the pandemic.
Lol isn’t everyone going to just stay in Osaka and do day trips to Kyoto? It’s like 600 yen 30 min train ride away.
Those are not rates designed to “thin out tourist crowds”. If they were, they would have been increasing mostly at the lower end, not the higher end.
Reasonable.
Very smart the Japanese are not desperate for money….
I was stunned how inexpensive everything was compared to what I spend at home.
I’m sure most can absorb this fee without a problem.
I am thinking ofgetting a PR but it also crucial, cause i am lacking 10 more points, so i have to reach N2
Kyoto’s government is near bankrupt. Many of the operators of tourist attractions there have tax free status.
Overtourism comes from volume, not luxury. The 200 yen to 400 yen bump barely touches the 6,000-20,000 yen volume segment that is driving the crowding. I get the attempt to make the tax look “staggered,” but it is extracting the bulk of the fine from the least price-sensitive segment and leaving the demographic that is the true volume-driver relatively untouched.
Kyoto is an ancient town where you cannot simply widen the streets or build bigger temples with larger holding areas. Better transportation infrastructure is sorely needed but there is only so much it can do when there are immovable bottle necks built in to so many locations.
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If tourists can fork out that amount for per night stay whats levy to them ?
.. JUST WANT MORE MONEY ONLY to say it bluntly
As i have said before this does nothing
You can slap a 50k tourism fee, people will just take a 30 min train and sleep in osaka.
Actually a decent enough idea
That sounds quite fair.
So not much changes for a “normal” tourist.
京都は財政破綻しかけている。第二の夕張市だ。
Utterly brainless.
Thinking that the rich will be put off by something like that.
Based based based based based based
와…. 한동안 일본 여행은 가지 말아야겠는걸…. 지난 여름 도쿄 여행은 좋았는데 지하철에서 인종차별을 목격하고나선 어짜피 다시 방문하고 싶진 않았음
This seems like a knee-jerk justification for raising the hotel tax for *other reasons* rather than an actual proposal to cut crowd sizes.
Most tourists do not earn anywhere near enough to stay in a 30k per night hotel room, let alone 100k. Americans love to centre themselves in every conversation [but tourists from predominately white wealthy countries only make up about 18% of Japan’s total tourist numbers.](https://www.tourism.jp/en/tourism-database/stats/inbound/) Mainland Chinese (excluding HK, ROC/Taiwan and Macau) alone make up 18.9%. Suffice it to say they’re not all booking out suites at the Park Hyatt.
The brunt of these increases will be borne on business travelers and precisely the kind of tourist the Japanese government has spent decades trying to attract, while doing nothing to disincentivize the tourists who are actually contributing to overcrowding.
However this is a Catch-22 for local government and they know it. If you created a less progressive levy by drastically raising the rate for stays under 20k yen per night then you’d create an incentive for these tourists to stay in Osaka instead. That would increase crowding on trains and place additional strain on Kyoto’s already stressed to capacity transport network, which is the main *actual* contributor to overcrowding.
So Kyoto’s government has essentially chosen the least useless of two useless options here. If they’re smart they’ll use that additional revenue to improve transport links, whether that be investing in more or larger buses, extending the subway or even a more radical option like reviving the tram network they foolishly gutted back in the early 80’s. But if Kyoto local government were smart then it wouldn’t be Kyoto local government.
tax the rich!
seriously: what stops me to book my hotel in Osaka and then take a 15 minutes train ride to Kyoto? This feels like they’re keeping all the number of tourists but scaring away those who actually wants to spend moneys there in hotels and restaurants.
The accommodation fee won’t put off tourists. If you can afford to go to Japan, you’ll pay the fee.
Its a good attempt though.
Continuing incompetence by the local Kyoto government, and those who vote them in will no doubt eat this up, even though they’ve been doing this for decades and it hasn’t worked.
So… is this glued onto anyone who stays in a hotel? Well, I hope Kyoto likes illegal Air BnBs.
As a recent tourist in Kyoto, there’s too many tourists in Kyoto. Good for them.
All you have to do is stay in Osaka or any other town in Kansai and just go to Kyoto for a day trip. I don’t think this is going to help thin out the tourists. The last time I went to Kyoto was seven years ago, and it was already unbearably crowded. I cannot imagine what it looks like now.
The problem with this is that it will progress, you would think “it’s only for the rich” so you agree, but socialism always progress by allocating more and more expenditure, when you realize your country will be already be infected with socialism.
But it’s the foreigners who are pricing people out, right?
Slapping tourists is a bit extreme but I guess that’s the vibe right now.
Fuck Kyoto and fuck this shit.
I just left Kyoto. In fact I just left early.
I was on a business trip and couldn’t find a hotel for until 25,000 a night!!! Toyoko In. Apa. 25,000 a night.
I decided, I’ll stay on a hostel. Not a big deal. Fucking asshole snoring so loud I could hear him with noise canceling earbuds in. Got like 4 hours sleep. Next next night. Different guy. Also fucking snoring. I just said fuck it. Skipped the second day of the conference and got the first train home.
First off. Fuck selfish piece of shit assholes who sleep in dormroom hostels that snore. You kept 5 people awake.
Second. Fuck Kyoto for raising hotel prices for local so high we can’t afford it.
Third, fuck my school for raising reasech budgets in 15 years and setting a limit at 1.1 man a night.
I support this effort 🫡
I can’t blame em man those are crowds were insane in 2019 when I was there last and I’m sure it’s only got worse. Amsterdam did something similar iirc. Great that people wanna visit, but locals have to live there as well
Visitors including those from different prefectures?
It is gonna hit more taxpayers lol
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