New Year in Japan: Pricing and Prepping Your Short-Term Rental for Oshogatsu
Every autumn I get the same reminder from our booking calendar: in our own portfolio, the last week of December has quietly become one of the strongest revenue windows of the year — often outperforming Golden Week on a per-night basis. And yet it’s a seasonal peak I still see many operators under-prepare for.
New Year (お正月, Oshogatsu) in Japan isn’t just a holiday like Obon or Silver Week. It shuts down large parts of the country’s normal service economy for several days, while simultaneously pulling in domestic travelers visiting family and international guests drawn to a distinctive cultural experience. That combination makes it one of the trickiest, and most important, windows to price correctly.