January 5, 2023

Hotel Okura will Expand the Number of Hotels it Operates in Japan and Abroad to 150 by 2030, Approximately Double the Current Number

Okura will increase the number of hubs, especially in Southeast Asia and other foreign countries. With the COVID-19 pandemic under control, international tourist and business traffic will grow again. More and more hotel companies are expanding their overseas operations with the customer service skills they have honed in Japan.

Currently, there are 81 hotels, 54 in Japan and 27 overseas. The policy is to bring the number of domestic and overseas facilities to the same level of around 75 by 2030. The company has decided to focus its hotel openings in Southeast Asia and open its first resort hotel in Vietnam in 2027. It will also expand into Oman in 2027.

In addition to the luxury brand "Okura," the company plans to develop "Hotel Nikko" and stay-only "Hotel JAL City." It will open new hotels based on a system in which it receives a consignment of hotel management from real estate owners.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), of which the world's airlines are members, expects 4.2 billion air passengers in 2023, a 10% increase from 2022. The number of cases will return to the level before the spread of the new coronavirus due to the easing of travel restrictions and other factors.

Hotel Okura's performance also has bottomed out, as the Japanese government's easing of waterfront measures has led to higher occupancy rates at its hotels in Japan.

The business environment becomes more challenging to predict, so Okura decided to go with "The same weighting of foreign and Japanese hotels will lead to stable revenues". It builds a revenue base that is not affected by geopolitical risks.

Other domestic companies in the same industry are also aggressively expanding overseas. Seibu Prince Hotels Worldwide will open the highest priced "The Prince" in a prime location in New York, USA, in 2023. Through its subsidiaries, it will also expand into Egypt and Dubai.

Hoshino Resorts (Nagano Prefecture) is also considering opening “ryokan” in North America.