Demand for lodgings in central Osaka is rising ahead of the Osaka Kansai Expo 2025, which opens on April 13.
New hotels have been opening in succession, but with the rapid boom of foreign tourists there are still concerns about a shortage of hotels and a sharp rise in accommodation prices.
“It is rare for a new hotel to be so active,” said Yosuke Morisaki, general manager of Hotel Hankyu Gran Respire Osaka. “The expo may have boosted demand.”
The hotel, a subsidiary of Hankyu Hanshin Holdings Inc., opened on March 21 in the redevelopment area north of JR Osaka Station.
The 482-room hotel is said to be 60 percent booked on weekends until around May.
In Osaka, hotels catering to various clientele have opened one after another ahead of the expo.
Among luxury brands, the Canada-based Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts opened its first hotel in the city, Four Seasons Hotel Osaka, in the summer of 2024.
In April this year, the U.S.-based Hilton Hotels and Resorts opened Waldorf Astoria Osaka, a new establishment of its most luxurious hotel brand.
APA Group also opened a 2,055-room high-rise hotel, one of the largest in western Japan, in December 2024.
Each hotel has its sights set on the rapidly increasing number of foreign visitors to Japan.
According to an estimate made by the Osaka Convention and Tourism Bureau, the number of foreign visitors to the prefecture in 2024 was a record 14.64 million, up from the previous record set in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2025, the bureau expects the figure to reach 16 million.
Mingen Hashimoto, 49, a company executive who runs Dotonbori Hotel in Osaka’s Chuo Ward, which opened the same year as the 1970 Osaka Expo, said, “The pace of reservations is faster than in previous years and the hotel is almost full for April and May.”
Hashimoto said, “Once the expo starts, there will definitely be a shortage of accommodations. Demand is probably 1.5 times greater than supply.”
In fact, demand for travel to Kansai appears to be swelling.
As of March 23, Hankyu Travel International Co. reported that travel tours to the Kansai region from April to September attracted 37 percent more visitors than in the same period last year.
As of February, “Jaran net,” a travel reservation site operated by Recruit Co., showed that the number of reservations for accommodations in Osaka Prefecture during the six-month expo period through Oct. 13 was more than double that of the previous year.
A representative of Kinki Nippon Tourist Co., which offers packages that include lodgings and expo tickets, said, “The number of reservations has increased since mid-March. There is concern about room shortages on weekends and holidays, depending on the day.”
Going forward, there is a concern about the soaring cost of lodgings.
According to STR, a leading real estate data analysis firm, the average room rate for hotels in Osaka Prefecture in December 2024 was 22,622 yen ($157).
This was a 66 percent increase from prices in the same month in 2019, before the pandemic.
The demand for the expo coincides with the higher costs.
Hideyuki Araki, chief researcher at Resona Research Institute Co., said, “Depending on the supply and demand for hotels after the expo opens, there is a possibility that the unit price will rise further. The impact on business travelers will be unavoidable.”
AloJapan.com