1,537 Machiya Inns: 88% in Kyoto, Kanazawa Second

1,537 Machiya Inns: 88% in Kyoto, Kanazawa Second — Japan Stock Map

Posted: 2026.08.31

Machiya inns are invoked constantly in the debate over overtourism in Kyoto, yet remarkably little material actually counts how many exist nationwide, where they are, and in what form. Extracting the facilities classified under the lodging category “machiya” from the 106,232-property Japanese accommodation master tracked by MetroEngines Research yields 1,537 facilities and 2,751 rooms spread across 27 prefectures. Kyoto Prefecture alone accounts for 1,352 of them, or 88.0%, with Ishikawa Prefecture’s 64 facilities — 61 of them in Kanazawa City — forming the second pole. This article quantifies the geographic distribution of that machiya stock, the “a building rather than an inn” structure implied by an average of 1.79 rooms per facility, and the price levels of the wards and cities where machiya are thickest.

Metric Definitions Used in This Article

Machiya inn: A facility classified under the lodging category “machiya” in the MetroEngines Research accommodation master. The term refers to lodging that makes use of traditional machiya townhouse architecture, and the classification rests on information registered by the facilities themselves. The population is built from facilities confirmed to be listed on OTAs and is not a complete census.
ADR (average daily rate): An estimated settled rate (tax-excluded equivalent), calculated by applying category-specific correction coefficients to the lowest published plan rate each facility posts on OTAs (two guests per room, per-room rate, tax included). Cross-checked against property-level results disclosed by listed hotel REITs (91 facilities, most recent three months), the median error is roughly 7%. These are estimates and differ from each facility’s actual transaction prices or accounting figures. Area-level ADR is the median across the target facilities (the level of a typical facility in that area). The verified categories for estimated settled ADR are business, city, resort, ryokan and capsule; machiya are not among them. The ward- and city-level estimated settled ADR shown in this article is “the market level of the areas where machiya inns are located,” not the rate of the machiya inns themselves.
Listed price: The average price of all plans published on OTAs (two guests per room, per building or per room, tax included). Because many machiya inns operate as whole-house rentals, note that this price is frequently the rate for an entire building. This article takes each facility’s average price for June 2026 check-ins and uses the median of those values.
Data source: MetroEngines Research

Key Takeaways

— Machiya inns nationwide number 1,537 facilities and 2,751 rooms. Their share of all accommodation is 1.45% by facility count, but falls to 0.10% by room count
— Kyoto Prefecture holds 1,352 facilities, or 88.0%, with Ishikawa Prefecture’s 64 facilities (61 in Kanazawa City) as the second pole. The other 26 prefectures combined total 185 facilities
— An average of 1.79 rooms per facility, and 81.3% have only one room. That is close to the 2.00 rooms of vacation rentals — a business structure nearer to whole-house rental than to hotels
— Listed prices run 1.5–2.2× those of other facilities in the same ward or city. These are per-building rates, however, and embed differences in guest capacity
— Higashiyama Ward’s estimated settled ADR of ¥23,800 is 1.44× the Kyoto Prefecture median, while Shimogyo Ward at ¥15,700 and Minami Ward at ¥14,300 fall below it

1,537 Facilities and 2,751 Rooms Nationwide — 1.4% of Facilities, 0.1% of Rooms

Start with the overall picture. There are 1,537 machiya inns nationwide, equal to 1.45% of the 106,232-facility population. By room count, however, the 2,751 rooms come to just 0.10% of the population’s 2,851,361 total rooms. A meaningful presence in facility numbers, an extremely small one in room supply — that gap is the defining characteristic of the machiya stock.

By prefecture, Kyoto’s 1,352 facilities account for 88.0% of the total, followed by Ishikawa with 64, Gifu 26, Fukuoka 23, Shiga 12, Nara 11, Okayama 6 and Fukui 6. Of the 27 prefectures where machiya inns appear, only six hold 10 or more.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (N=1,537 facilities across 27 prefectures)

What deserves attention is the share machiya inns hold within each prefecture’s accommodation stock. In Kyoto, 27.6% of the prefecture’s 4,904 facilities are machiya inns — more than one lodging facility in four. Ishikawa follows at 5.5%, then Shiga 1.8%, Gifu 1.7%, Nara 1.7% and Fukuoka 1.4%, an order of magnitude below Kyoto. The geographic skew of the machiya format is pronounced not only in absolute numbers but in density.

Table 1 | Machiya inns by prefecture: facilities, rooms and within-prefecture share (N=1,537 facilities across 27 prefectures)
Prefecture	Machiya inns (facilities)	Rooms	Per facility	Within-prefecture share
Kyoto	1,352	2,299	1.70 rooms	27.6%
Ishikawa	64	94	1.47 rooms	5.5%
Gifu	26	38	1.46 rooms	1.7%
Fukuoka	23	35	1.52 rooms	1.4%
Shiga	12	69	5.75 rooms	1.8%
Nara	11	37	3.36 rooms	1.7%
Okayama	6	13	2.17 rooms	0.7%
Fukui	6	16	2.67 rooms	0.7%
National total	1,537	2,751	1.79 rooms	1.45%

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team. Room counts are the sum for the 1,533 facilities with registered room data and represent a lower bound. Per-facility figures are calculated on facilities that have room-count data.

Some prefectures — Shiga at 5.75 rooms per facility, Nara at 3.36 — have few facilities but somewhat larger ones. In Shiga, multi-room machiya ryokan (28 rooms in Hikone, 20 in Otsu, 17 in Nagahama) lift the stock. Within the same “machiya” classification, then, two formats coexist: whole-house rentals and multi-room properties.

Distribution Within Kyoto City — 45.6% of Kamigyo Ward’s Facilities Are Machiya, but Only 10.9% of Its Rooms

Kyoto’s 1,352 facilities are concentrated in specific wards of the city: 393 in Shimogyo, 330 in Higashiyama, 226 in Nakagyo, 157 in Kamigyo and 110 in Minami. Those five wards alone account for 89.9% of the prefecture total.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (Kyoto Prefecture, N=1,352 facilities)

Judged purely on facility share, the machiya presence looks enormous. In Kamigyo Ward, 157 of the ward’s 344 facilities — 45.6% — are machiya inns. Kita Ward follows at 40.2%, Higashiyama at 39.6%, Shimogyo at 38.1% and Nakagyo at 32.2%. Across central Kyoto, in other words, at least one lodging facility in every three or four is a machiya.

Switch to a room-count basis and the picture inverts. Kamigyo’s 265 machiya rooms are 10.9% of the ward’s 2,425 total rooms; Higashiyama’s 569 rooms are 7.2%; and Shimogyo’s 736 rooms are a mere 2.6%. Because Shimogyo holds many large hotels around Kyoto Station, its total room count reaches 28,136, so 393 machiya facilities all but disappear as room supply.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (wards and cities in Kyoto Prefecture with five or more machiya inns; N=1,352 facilities / 76,258 total rooms across the nine areas covered)

This divergence between facility share and room share is unavoidable in any discussion of machiya inns. For questions of townscape, local community and neighbourhood coordination, facility counts are what matter; for lodging supply and market impact, room counts are. From the same data, the conclusion shifts by several-fold to more than tenfold depending on which metric you pick.

1.79 Rooms per Facility, 81% with a Single Room — A Collection of Buildings, Not Inns

The reason for the divergence is simple: machiya inns average 1.79 rooms. Of the 1,533 facilities with room-count data, 1,246 — 81.3% — are registered with a single room, meaning the whole building is let to one party. Two rooms applies to 84 facilities, three to 64 and four to 43; fewer than 50 facilities have 10 or more.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (calculated on facilities with registered room counts. Machiya N=1,533 / vacation rentals N=9,615 / guesthouses N=6,297 / minshuku N=7,147 / ryokan N=14,883 / business hotels N=12,447 / city hotels N=1,811)

Lining up average rooms per facility by category, the 1.79 rooms of machiya inns sits almost level with vacation rentals at 2.00. Against guesthouses at 7.32, minshuku at 7.58, ryokan at 18.63, business hotels at 90.69 and city hotels at 174.96, it is clear that machiya inns are structurally closer to whole-house rental than to hotels — a shift that regulatory change around single-room licensing, visible in 554 new-opening records under the revised Lodging Business Act effective 15 June, has pushed further in small-scale formats.

This structure carries two implications for investment and development. First, the investment size per project is small and the barrier to entry low, but fixed operating costs cannot be spread across multiple rooms, which makes per-building revenue design essential. Second, its efficiency as a way to add urban lodging supply is limited; it works rather as a means of putting vacant and underused property back to work — the same current that is producing dispersed hotels built out of restored vacant houses around the country.

Kanazawa’s 61 Facilities Form the Second Pole — A Thin Third Tier Across 27 Prefectures

Look beyond Kyoto and the second pole is unmistakably Kanazawa. Of Ishikawa Prefecture’s 64 facilities, 61 sit in Kanazawa City, making up 5.5% of the prefecture’s accommodation stock. An urban fabric holding four Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings — Higashi Chaya (Higashiyama Higashi), Kazuemachi, Utatsusan Sanroku and Teramachidai — underpins the stock available for machiya conversion.

A third tier follows: Gifu with 26 facilities (Takayama 15, Hida 6, Gujo 3), Fukuoka with 23 (Hakata Ward 17, Chuo Ward 3, Yame 2), Shiga with 12 (Otsu 4, Nagahama 3, Hikone 3, Omihachiman 2) and Nara with 11 (Nara City 8). All cluster in cities that retain old townscapes, forming stock by the same logic as Kyoto and Kanazawa. Smaller but distinct clusters are scattered as well — five facilities in Obama City (Fukui), three in Kurashiki (Okayama), two in Tsuwano (Shimane).

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team. Circle size is the number of machiya inns by prefecture (N=1,537 facilities across 27 prefectures). Positions are representative points near each prefectural capital.

A spread across 27 prefectures shows that machiya are not a phenomenon unique to Kyoto. At the same time, the fact that the other 26 prefectures combined amount to only 185 facilities means substantial room for growth remains elsewhere. More than 100 municipalities nationwide hold Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings or historic townscapes, and only a small fraction of them show any machiya-inn cluster.

Listed Prices Run 1.5–2.2× Other Facilities in the Same Ward — Note These Are Per-Building Rates

Next, price. For listed prices on June 2026 check-ins (two guests per room, tax included, average of all plans), taking each facility’s average and then the median gives ¥39,400 for machiya inns in Kyoto Prefecture (N=593 facilities). Non-machiya facilities in the same prefecture come to ¥22,700 (N=1,592 facilities), a ratio of 1.73×.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (June 2026 check-ins, per building or per room for two guests, tax included. Only wards and cities with at least eight machiya and at least eight comparison facilities are shown)

By ward and city, Kanazawa shows the widest gap at 2.18× (machiya ¥39,800 / N=47 facilities vs others ¥18,300 / N=237 facilities), followed by Shimogyo Ward at 2.13× and Kamigyo Ward at 2.04×. Higashiyama Ward is 1.57×, but that is because Higashiyama is itself a high-rate area within Kyoto City, so the comparison group’s level (¥27,000) is high. Takayama City also shows a clear gap at 1.75× (machiya ¥50,200 / N=13 facilities vs others ¥28,700 / N=282 facilities).

Table 2 | Listed prices of machiya inns vs non-machiya by ward and city (June 2026 check-ins, two guests per room, tax included)
Ward / City	Machiya listed price	N	Non-machiya	N	Multiple
Kanazawa City (Ishikawa)	¥39,800	47	¥18,300	237	2.18
Shimogyo Ward (Kyoto)	¥41,300	181	¥19,400	350	2.13
Kamigyo Ward (Kyoto)	¥38,200	42	¥18,700	59	2.04
Nakagyo Ward (Kyoto)	¥37,100	93	¥21,200	233	1.75
Takayama City (Gifu)	¥50,200	13	¥28,700	282	1.75
Sakyo Ward (Kyoto)	¥38,100	14	¥23,400	67	1.63
Higashiyama Ward (Kyoto)	¥42,500	169	¥27,000	218	1.57
Minami Ward (Kyoto)	¥29,200	54	¥19,300	174	1.52

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (June 2026 check-ins, median of per-facility averages, rounded to the nearest hundred yen)

That multiple cannot simply be read as “machiya are expensive,” however. A machiya inn’s listed price is the rate for an entire building, so a party of four or six brings the per-person cost down. Set beside a hotel’s per-room rate, the difference in guest capacity gets folded into the ratio. As with the gap between listed prices and prices actually sold, this is a metric that has to be read with its comparison assumptions stated explicitly.

Market Levels in Machiya-Heavy Wards — Higashiyama’s Estimated Settled ADR Is 1.44× the Kyoto Median

Because machiya inns themselves are not among the verified categories for estimated settled ADR, what comes next is the level of the lodging market itself in the wards and cities where machiya are thickest. Averaging estimated settled ADR on a confirmed-actuals basis across the 12 months from August 2025 to July 2026 gives the following.

Table 3 | Estimated settled ADR in machiya-heavy wards and cities (12-month average, August 2025–July 2026)
Area	Estimated settled ADR (12-month average)	Facilities covered (median)	Machiya inns (facilities)
Higashiyama Ward (Kyoto City)	¥23,800	47	330
Nakagyo Ward (Kyoto City)	¥17,100	105	226
Shimogyo Ward (Kyoto City)	¥15,700	160	393
Minami Ward (Kyoto City)	¥14,300	55	110
Takayama City (Gifu)	¥17,100	133	15
Nara City (Nara)	¥13,000	59	8
Otsu City (Shiga)	¥12,500	33	4
Kanazawa City (Ishikawa)	¥10,300	116	61
[Reference] Kyoto Prefecture overall	¥16,600	588	1,352
[Reference] Ishikawa Prefecture overall	¥11,200	238	64

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team. 12-month average on a confirmed-actuals basis, August 2025–July 2026, rounded to the nearest hundred yen. Coverage is limited to the verified categories for estimated settled ADR (business, city, resort, ryokan, capsule); machiya are not included.

Higashiyama’s ¥23,800 is 1.44× the Kyoto Prefecture median of ¥16,600, standing out even within the city. The ward, home to 330 machiya inns, is therefore where the machiya product sits inside the highest market price band. Shimogyo at ¥15,700 and Minami at ¥14,300, by contrast, fall below the prefecture median. The simple equation of machiya concentration with high rates does not hold: heavy supply around Kyoto Station pushes the market level down, and that shows up directly in the figures.

Kanazawa’s ¥10,300 sits slightly below Ishikawa Prefecture’s ¥11,200. Despite hosting the second-largest machiya cluster at 61 facilities, the city’s overall market level is merely on par with the prefecture average, leaving headroom on the rate side. Takayama’s ¥17,100 is 1.51× Gifu Prefecture’s ¥11,300 — a high level for a regional city with 15 machiya inns. As a reference case for turning the machiya product into higher area-wide rates, Takayama is the easiest to look to.

Stock Formation Peaked in 2017 — Now Cruising at Around 30 Openings a Year

Reading when the machiya stock was formed, via registered opening years for facilities confirmed to be listed on OTAs, shows a clear peak. 2016 added 130 facilities, 2017 added 197 and 2018 added 149 — 476 in three years — and 2020 recorded a further 119. Those five years alone account for roughly 40% of the stock standing today.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (OTA-listing basis, N=969 facilities, 2012–2026). Because listings appear several months before opening, the most recent years may rise as further listings come through.

From 2021 onward the pace settled at 52, 31, 27, 38 and 28 facilities, with 33 in 2026 — a cruising speed in the low 30s per year. Given that the stock of machiya suitable for conversion is finite, this level is likely to hold for some time.

The movement in Kyoto’s share is the interesting part. In 2017, 182 of 197 facilities (92.4%) were in Kyoto Prefecture; by 2025 that had fallen to 13 of 28 (46.4%), dispersing into Ishikawa, Gifu, Fukuoka, Shiga and elsewhere. In 2026, however, it is back to 31 of 33 (93.9%). Note that the 2026 figure is on an OTA-listing basis, and since listings appear several months ahead of opening, facilities outside Kyoto may still be added. This is a metric to read as a multi-year average rather than one to draw a trend from in any single year.

Review Patterns — Location, Staff and Cleanliness Beat the Area Median

As a supplementary view, consider guest review scores. Among the machiya inns aggregated by the HotelBank Editorial Team, taking the 18 facilities with the most reviews and weighting their category scores over the past 24 months gives location 4.66 (N=1,947 reviews), service 4.64 (N=1,484), rooms 4.54 (N=1,539), facilities 4.61 (N=499), staff 4.77 (N=480) and cleanliness 4.69 (N=465).

The Kyoto Prefecture area medians over the same period are location 4.51 (578 facilities), service 4.41 (602), rooms 4.37 (610), facilities 4.26 (333), staff 4.53 (336) and cleanliness 4.44 (396). The machiya sample beat the area median in all six categories. The gaps are widest for staff (+0.24) and facilities (+0.35), which can be read as the close communication small-team operations allow, plus the condition of buildings that have been through renovation.

This sample is limited to the facilities with the most reviews, however, and skews toward multi-room machiya ryokan. Single-room whole-house properties collect few reviews and are not adequately reflected here. Read it as a picture of review-rich machiya inns rather than of the segment as a whole.

Kyoto’s Lodging Tax Revision of March 2026 — For Whole-House Rentals, the Per-Person Denominator Bites

Kyoto City’s lodging tax was revised for stays from 1 March 2026. According to the city’s announcement, the revised rates are ¥200 for lodging charges (per person per night) under ¥6,000, ¥400 from ¥6,000 to under ¥20,000, ¥1,000 from ¥20,000 to under ¥50,000, ¥4,000 from ¥50,000 to under ¥100,000, and ¥10,000 at ¥100,000 and above. The previous schedule had three bands: ¥200 under ¥20,000, ¥500 at ¥20,000 and above, and ¥1,000 at ¥50,000 and above. Kyoto City projects post-revision tax revenue of roughly ¥12.6 billion.

What matters operationally for machiya inns is that the tax base is the room-only charge per person per night (room rate plus service charge). For a whole-house rental, the band is set by the per-building rate divided by the number of guests. As shown above, the median listed price for machiya inns in Kyoto Prefecture is around ¥39,400 for two guests, which works out to roughly ¥19,700 per person — inside the ¥6,000-to-under-¥20,000 band (¥400), but with only about ¥300 of headroom before the ¥20,000 threshold, so a small price increase moves the property into the ¥1,000 band. Let the same building to four guests and the per-person figure falls to about ¥9,900 — the same ¥400 band, but with far more headroom. For whole-house rentals, then, the assumed party size, not price alone, drives the tax band, which makes building per-party-size tax amounts into plan design a practical priority.

Table 4 | Per-person, per-night rate and applicable Kyoto lodging tax band, by per-building listed price × assumed party size
Listed price per building	2 guests	3 guests	4 guests	5 guests	6 guests
Minami Ward ¥29,200	¥14,600 → ¥400	¥9,700 → ¥400	¥7,300 → ¥400	¥5,800 → ¥200	¥4,900 → ¥200
Kamigyo Ward ¥38,200	¥19,100 → ¥400	¥12,700 → ¥400	¥9,600 → ¥400	¥7,600 → ¥400	¥6,400 → ¥400
Kyoto Prefecture median ¥39,400	¥19,700 → ¥400	¥13,100 → ¥400	¥9,800 → ¥400	¥7,900 → ¥400	¥6,600 → ¥400
Shimogyo Ward ¥41,300	¥20,600 → ¥1,000	¥13,800 → ¥400	¥10,300 → ¥400	¥8,300 → ¥400	¥6,900 → ¥400
Higashiyama Ward ¥42,500	¥21,200 → ¥1,000	¥14,200 → ¥400	¥10,600 → ¥400	¥8,500 → ¥400	¥7,100 → ¥400

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team. Row listed prices are the ward and city listed prices shown above (June 2026 check-ins, median of per-facility averages); tax bands are Kyoto City’s published rates (applicable to stays from 1 March 2026). Each cell shows the per-person, per-night rate obtained by dividing the per-building listed price by the party size, and the tax band it falls into. Shaded cells fall into the ¥1,000 band. The tax base is the room-only charge (room rate plus service charge); this table uses listed price as a proxy and is approximate. No new estimates have been made — the table consists solely of division between two values already presented in the text.

* Note on the population: The facility and room counts in this article are aggregates within the scope tracked by MetroEngines Research. Machiya inns not listed on OTAs fall outside the population, and this is not a complete census. Room counts rest on information registered by the facilities, and because four facilities have no registration, 2,751 rooms is a lower bound. The “machiya” classification likewise depends on facility registration, so properties that use machiya architecture but are registered under another category are not included.

Conclusion — A Format Whose Story Changes Depending on Whether You Count Facilities or Rooms

Organising the figures behind Japan’s 1,537 machiya inns and 2,751 rooms, four points stand out.

First, geographic concentration is extreme. Kyoto Prefecture accounts for 88.0%, 21 times the 64 facilities of second-place Ishikawa. Machiya inns appear in 27 prefectures, yet everything outside Kyoto adds up to just 185 facilities. Second, facility counts and room counts show completely different landscapes. In Kyoto’s Kamigyo Ward, 45.6% of facilities are machiya but only 10.9% of rooms. That divergence stems from the 1.79-rooms-per-facility structure: as businesses, machiya inns are closer to whole-house rentals than to hotels.

Third, listed prices run 1.5–2.2× those of other facilities in the same ward or city, but these are per-building rates and embed differences in guest capacity. Measured by the level of the area market itself (estimated settled ADR), Higashiyama Ward is 1.44× the Kyoto median while Shimogyo and Minami fall below it — machiya concentration and high rates do not necessarily coincide. Fourth, stock formation peaked between 2016 and 2020 and now cruises in the low 30s of openings per year. Accumulation outside Kyoto showed one burst of dispersion in 2025, and regional cities with traditional townscapes still have room to grow.

For investors and developers, the question is how to bundle the combination of a small per-building investment and a high rate level; for local governments, it is whether policy can be designed by separating the two yardsticks of facility density and room supply. Recounting the machiya format in numbers should be the first step.