Most short-term rental operators in Japan set their prices by looking at what nearby listings charge on Airbnb. It’s the obvious move — but it means you’re anchoring your rate to what your competitors decided, not to what guests are actually willing and able to pay.

There’s a better reference point sitting in a free JNTO dataset that almost nobody in the guesthouse world uses.

TL;DR

  • JNTO’s Consumption Trend Survey tracks how much foreign visitors spend in Japan, broken down by country of origin and spending category.
  • Accommodation typically accounts for around 28–33% of a visitor’s total trip spend.
  • Western long-haul markets (US, Europe, Australia) spend significantly more per night on accommodation than short-haul East Asian markets.
  • Knowing which source markets your guests come from — and their typical spend profile — is a more reliable pricing anchor than OTA comp sets alone.
  • Even a modest upward adjustment for properties serving high-spend markets can meaningfully improve annual revenue.

What Does JNTO’s Consumption Survey Actually Track?

JNTO publishes a quarterly Consumption Trend Survey (訪日外国人消費動向調査), surveying departing foreign visitors at major Japanese airports. It captures total spend per trip broken down by category — accommodation, food and drink, shopping, transportation, and entertainment — and by country of origin.

The data is publicly available and free at statistics.jnto.go.jp. You don’t need a subscription or a revenue management platform to access it.

What makes it useful for operators isn’t the headline figure (“inbound tourists spent ¥X trillion last quarter”). It’s the per-trip, per-category breakdown by source market. That’s where the pricing signal lives.

Which Source Markets Spend the Most on Accommodation?

The short answer: long-haul Western visitors spend significantly more on accommodation than short-haul East Asian visitors — both in absolute terms and as a share of their total trip budget.

Based on recent JNTO data — I’d recommend checking the latest quarterly release directly since figures shift — here’s the general pattern:

Higher accommodation spend: Visitors from the US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, and Canada tend to spend ¥15,000–¥25,000+ per person per night on accommodation. They often travel solo or in couples, so per-booking value is high and the accommodation share of total spend is substantial.

Mid-range: Visitors from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore fall somewhere in the middle — often traveling in couples or families, more budget-conscious than Western long-haul but spending more per night than typical Korean group tours.

Volume-but-lower-ADR markets: Korean visitors are Japan’s largest inbound market by volume, but their trips are often short (3–5 nights) and accommodation spend per night tends to be lower. Chinese group tours historically concentrate spend on shopping rather than accommodation.

None of this means you should deprioritise volume markets. But if your listing is designed for and attracting Western long-haul guests, your pricing floor is probably too low.

How Do You Translate This Into a Pricing Decision?

Start by figuring out who actually stays with you. If you’re not already tracking guest nationality — your OTA dashboard usually has this in some form — start now. Look at the last 3–6 months of bookings and identify your top three source markets.

Then cross-reference with the JNTO data:

  1. What’s the average total spend per trip for each of your top source markets?
  2. What share of that is accommodation?
  3. Divide by average length of stay to get accommodation spend per person per night.
  4. Compare that figure to your current ADR.

If your average Australian guest nationally spends ¥18,000 per night on accommodation, and your listing sits at ¥9,000, you have real room to test higher rates — at least during windows when that market is most active.

Why OTA Comp Sets Mislead You

OTA comp sets feel objective because they show real prices from real listings in your area. But they measure what your competitors decided to charge — often using the same lazy benchmarking everyone else does. The result is market-wide anchoring to a number that may have nothing to do with what guests in your segment can pay.

I’ve seen guesthouses in central Tokyo charging ¥7,000 per room per night because “that’s what everyone nearby charges,” while regularly hosting guests who flew from Europe and are spending ¥200,000+ across a 10-night trip. The accommodation share of that trip is ¥60,000–¥70,000. A ¥7,000 nightly rate puts you at the very bottom of what they’d consider budget travel.

You’re not obligated to charge more. But you should at least know you have the room.

Does This Matter for Property Investment Decisions?

If you’re evaluating whether a property is worth buying or developing, visitor spend data matters even more. A property in a location that attracts predominantly Western long-haul guests — near a major heritage site, or in a Tokyo neighbourhood popular with international travellers — has a different ADR ceiling than one in a domestic tourism corridor.

We built our Japan hotel investment ROI calculator partly because we kept running into operators modelling yield on occupancy assumptions alone, without factoring in the likely spend profile of their future guests. The guest mix assumption changes your ADR ceiling, which changes everything downstream.

What Else the Data Tells You

The JNTO survey also breaks down spend by purpose of visit — leisure, business, visiting friends and relatives. Business travellers from Western markets typically have higher accommodation budgets because they’re not paying out of pocket. If your property has good transport links, a proper desk, and reliable wifi, that data supports pricing accordingly.

The post-2020 recovery has also reshuffled the inbound mix considerably. Some pre-pandemic powerhouse markets haven’t fully returned; others have surged. Using 2023–2025 data gives you a much cleaner read on today’s demand structure than pre-COVID baselines.

The bottom line: free government data tells you what your guests are actually spending. It’s worth 30 minutes of your time to check whether your pricing reflects that.

This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment or business advice. Pricing decisions should reflect your specific property, location, and market conditions. For investment decisions, please consult a qualified professional.

FAQ

Q: Where can I find JNTO’s Consumption Trend Survey?

JNTO publishes the survey quarterly at statistics.jnto.go.jp. Look for the “訪日外国人消費動向調査” section. Both an English summary and the full Japanese report are available as free downloads, usually released around six weeks after the end of each quarter.

Q: Does accommodation spend vary by season as well as by market?

Yes — and this is an important nuance. Western long-haul guests tend to concentrate their visits during golden week, summer, and cherry blossom season, so their higher spend is weighted toward your peak windows. Shoulder season bookings typically skew more toward Asian short-haul markets with different spend profiles, which is one more reason flat-rate pricing across the year leaves money on the table.

Q: I’m a small operator — is this kind of data analysis worth my time?

Even a rough version of this is useful. Identify your top two or three source markets, find roughly where their accommodation spend sits in the JNTO data, and compare to your current ADR. If there’s a meaningful gap, run a 30-day pricing test at 15–20% above your usual rate and watch conversion. You don’t need to become a data analyst — you just need one number to challenge your current assumption.