Japan’s traditional guesthouses, or ryokans, have been forced to band together to succeed in a highly competition modern marketplace, delegates at the JATA -T-Expo in Tokyo were told.
In a discussion at the event, Yoshohiro Ueta, president of Hotel Iya Onsen, recounted how the communities around his ryokan had joined forces, combining their small individual budgets. This meant that they could afford to expand their PR activities and take on an agency, then later a bigger agency.
Ueta commented: “OTAs have their own valuation of your property [related to your size]. When you collaborate with others you get a higher valuation because you can learn from each other, and can agree upon common direction of the community, which helps to elevate the overall standards of service.”
Corresponding economies of scale allowed the organisation of ryokans to get access to foreign agencies and private-public collaborations – a long way away from needing to be featured in local brochures, a few years before.
Tyler Lynch, proprietor of the Kamesi Ryokan, continued with the story of how several ryokans in his community had formed an organisation in Nagano prefecture. With it, they had been able to start an ‘Onsen Town’ concept app for the community, showing visitors a list of restaurants and onsens (hot spring baths) in the area.
“It had been difficult to convince people for investment,” Lynch said. “When I asked local tourism providers to conduct a survey asking what they could do to improve tourism in Nagano, many said that there was no budget – so we started on our own, as an NPO.”
The Onsen Town Togura-Kamiyamada Audio Tour app is soon to be developed further to contain 300 restaurants, in five languages.
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