On 1 July 2026, Kumamoto City and Miyazaki City introduced a lodging tax on the same day. Both charge a flat ¥200 per person per night, with no tax-free threshold. Three months later, on 1 October, Morioka City and Nasu Town follow. The lodging tax is borne by the guest; the property acts as a special collecting agent, holding the money and remitting it. So did room rates themselves move across the start date? This article is not a list of planned schemes — it is narrowly a verification that compares actual market rates before and after implementation for a system already in force.

The conclusion first. In July 2026, the month of implementation, estimated settled ADR was down 5.0% year on year in Kumamoto City and down 4.2% in Miyazaki City. But that is not a tax effect. In the same month, Kagoshima City — which has no lodging tax — was down 4.6%, Oita City down 2.5%, the Miyazaki Prefecture average down 2.7% and the Kumamoto Prefecture average down 10.0%. The two taxed cities sit squarely inside the same band as the untaxed areas. Meanwhile, Japan’s national lodging price index was up 2.0% year on year. In short, the data shows no sign that room rates shifted upward in the implementation month, and no sign that they were pushed down by the amount of the tax either. Given how the scheme is built, that is the natural result. Below we work through the detail.

Three flat-rate schemes and one tiered scheme across the four municipalities

Start by lining up the schemes themselves. Of the four municipalities introducing a lodging tax in 2026, three — Kumamoto City, Miyazaki City and Morioka City — use a flat ¥200 per person per night, unchanged whatever the room rate, with no tax-free threshold. Nasu Town alone uses a six-band tiered scheme keyed to the accommodation charge, ranging from ¥100 to ¥3,000. Nasu Town also differs from the other three in exempting children under 12, along with pupils, students and accompanying staff on school trips and other school events.

One more point worth noting about Nasu Town is how it defines the tax base. Its “accommodation charge” means the room-only rate plus any service charge on it, and excludes meal charges and consumption tax. At onsen ryokan where two meals are standard, the tax base therefore comes out considerably smaller relative to the total bill. That distinction matters for the burden-rate discussion later on.

Table 1: Tax method, rate, tax-free threshold and main exemptions for the four municipalities introducing a lodging tax in 2026

Municipality	Effective date	Method and rate	Tax-free threshold	Main exemptions
Kumamoto City (Kumamoto)	1 July 2026	Flat ¥200 per person per night	None	Stays in the course of duties by foreign ambassadors and equivalent
Miyazaki City (Miyazaki)	1 July 2026	Flat ¥200 per person per night	None	Stays with no accommodation charge are outside the scope of the tax
Morioka City (Iwate)	1 October 2026	Flat ¥200 per person per night (regardless of age)	None	—
Nasu Town (Tochigi)	1 October 2026	Six tiers: under ¥10,000 → ¥100 / ¥10,000–20,000 → ¥300 / ¥20,000–30,000 → ¥500 / ¥30,000–50,000 → ¥800 / ¥50,000–100,000 → ¥1,500 / ¥100,000 and above → ¥3,000	None	Children under 12; pupils and students on school trips or school events, and accompanying staff

Source: compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from the official websites of Kumamoto City, Miyazaki City, Morioka City and Nasu Town

For a side-by-side view of every municipality in Japan that has adopted the tax, see Japan Lodging Tax 2026: All 62 Municipalities, Rates and ADR Burden. This article pulls four of them out of that list and tracks actual market rates across the start date.

Kumamoto ¥8,200 and Miyazaki ¥7,200 in the implementation month — both on last year’s track

Now to the market itself. The chart below plots monthly estimated settled ADR for Kumamoto City and Miyazaki City, with 2025 and 2026 overlaid on the same month axis. The lines stop at July because July 2026 is the most recent month comparable on a confirmed basis.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (as of July 2026, N = 84 properties in Kumamoto City, 58 in Miyazaki City)

Kumamoto City came in at ¥8,200 in July 2026, down 5.0% from ¥8,700 a year earlier. Miyazaki City was ¥7,200, down 4.2% from ¥7,600. There is no jump in the lines at the 1 July start date. If anything, both cities have been running slightly below the same months of the previous year since the start of 2026, and July sits on that same trajectory.

The spike to ¥12,600 visible in Miyazaki City in February is the usual seasonality driven by professional baseball spring training. That peak makes Miyazaki City look elevated on an annual average, but on a single-month July comparison the year-on-year figure is in negative territory.

Set against untaxed neighbours, the two taxed cities did not move on their own

Viewed in isolation, “−5%” looks like movement. So let us line the taxed cities up against nearby cities with no lodging tax, and against prefectural averages, for the same month on the same basis. To strip out confounders, this is the most straightforward approach available.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team. National lodging price index from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Consumer Price Index (e-Stat)

Kumamoto City (−5.0%) and Miyazaki City (−4.2%), which began taxing, sit between untaxed Kagoshima City (−4.6%) and Oita City (−2.5%). Look at the prefectural averages and Miyazaki Prefecture is −2.7% while Kumamoto Prefecture is −10.0% — the taxed cities are steadier than their prefectures as a whole. Morioka City (−2.1%) and Nasu Town (−12.7%), both facing an October start, likewise move with the Iwate Prefecture average (−1.5%) and with Nikko City (−10.3%) and the Tochigi Prefecture average (−6.6%) respectively. For where Kagoshima City — used here as a comparison — sits within its own prefecture’s rate structure, see Kagoshima’s Capital Is Its Cheapest: ADR ¥6,819 vs Kirishima ¥14,330.

As a yardstick, the national lodging price index went from 165.8 in July 2025 to 169.1 in July 2026, up 2.0%. The four municipalities covered here and their surroundings were in a softer phase than the national index, and that softness was shared regardless of whether a tax applied. There is therefore no basis for attributing the implementation-month rate movement to the lodging tax — that is the conclusion the data will support.

Table 2: Estimated settled ADR for July 2025 → July 2026 and year-on-year change, grouped by presence of a lodging tax (N = number of properties covered)

Area	Lodging tax	Jul 2025 ADR	Jul 2026 ADR	YoY	N (Jul 2026)
Kumamoto City	In force since 1 Jul	¥8,651	¥8,217	−5.0%	84
Miyazaki City	In force since 1 Jul	¥7,560	¥7,240	−4.2%	58
Kagoshima City	None	¥6,687	¥6,380	−4.6%	73
Oita City	None	¥6,608	¥6,442	−2.5%	42
Morioka City	From 1 Oct	¥7,308	¥7,154	−2.1%	42
Nasu Town	From 1 Oct	¥20,486	¥17,884	−12.7%	53
Nikko City	None	¥16,961	¥15,210	−10.3%	116
Nasushiobara City	None	¥13,241	¥12,516	−5.5%	69
Akita City	None	¥7,870	¥9,102	+15.7%	30
Aomori City	None	¥10,504	¥9,684	−7.8%	39
Miyazaki Pref. average	—	¥6,677	¥6,498	−2.7%	166
Kumamoto Pref. average	—	¥10,228	¥9,205	−10.0%	401
Iwate Pref. average	—	¥7,042	¥6,936	−1.5%	255
Tochigi Pref. average	—	¥10,306	¥9,629	−6.6%	403

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (N = number of properties used to calculate estimated settled ADR)

The tax barely shows up in listed prices because of how the scheme is built

The lodging tax is not, in the first place, a price added to a property’s revenue. All four municipalities use a special collection mechanism: the property receives the tax from the guest and files and remits it to the municipality by the end of the following month. In other words, the tax is money held on deposit and settled outside the accommodation charge, and in accounting terms it is separate from how the room itself is priced. Whether the tax is folded into the displayed price or collected separately at the front desk is an operational choice, but either way it is not a factor that moves the level of room rates.

For reference, here is the same month viewed through listed prices (all-plan average, tax-inclusive). Miyazaki City went from ¥15,000 in July 2025 to ¥16,300 in July 2026, up 9.1%; Kumamoto City went from ¥18,100 to ¥18,300, up 1.5%. But here too the untaxed Miyazaki Prefecture average rose 10.6%, Oita City 5.0% and the Iwate Prefecture average 8.7% — again, not a movement confined to taxed areas. Listed prices and estimated settled ADR split on sign because the two rest on different bases. The structure of that gap is set out in What Is Hotel ADR? Settled Rates 34-57% of Listed Prices, 2026.

Nasu Town and Morioka City, starting in October — the base the tax will sit on

Morioka City and Nasu Town start on 1 October, so within this article’s coverage period only the pre-tax months are observable. That makes it worth checking the base level the tax will sit on. Nasu Town matters especially: it is the first lodging tax in Tochigi Prefecture, and because the scheme is tiered, the base level directly determines which tax band applies. How the ratio applied to actual market rates differs between tiered and flat schemes is also compared in Nasu vs Morioka Lodging Tax Oct 1: Tiered 1.0-3.0% vs Flat ¥200.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (as of July 2026, N = 53 properties in Nasu Town, 116 in Nikko City)

Nasu Town came in at ¥17,900 in July 2026, down 12.7% from ¥20,500 a year earlier. Nikko City, another sightseeing destination in the same prefecture, moved in parallel at ¥15,200 and −10.3%, so Nasu Town’s level reads as tracking tourism demand in the north of the prefecture. Look at Nasu Town’s annual shape and the summer-driven curve is unmistakable, with a sharp August jump: August 2025 reached ¥28,600. The first month of the October start falls in the stable band after that summer peak has receded. For the rate structure across Tochigi Prefecture’s cities and towns, see Tochigi Hotel ADR: 3.6x City Gap, Nasu ¥20,192 vs Utsunomiya ¥7,349.

Morioka City was ¥7,200 in July 2026, down 2.1% from ¥7,300 a year earlier. That is almost identical to the Iwate Prefecture average (−1.5%), leaving the market broadly flat. Morioka City uses a flat ¥200, so the base level has no bearing on the tax amount. The pace of recovery by property type within Iwate Prefecture is covered in Iwate Settled ADR H1 2026: Business −3.2% in June, City +4.3%.

What percentage of the rate is ¥200? Flat schemes 2.4–5.6%, tiered 1.1–1.7%

Let us work out how much weight the lodging tax carries in the guest’s total payment, dividing through by actual market rates. The denominator here is July 2026 estimated settled ADR (per room), calculated for two cases: one guest per room and two guests per room. In the three flat-rate cities, two guests means ¥400 per room.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (calculated using July 2026 estimated settled ADR)

Table 3: Lodging tax as a share of July 2026 estimated settled ADR (one guest per room and two guests per room)

Municipality	Jul 2026 ADR (per room)	1 guest: tax / burden rate	2 guests: tax / burden rate
Miyazaki City	¥7,240	¥200 / 2.8%	¥400 / 5.5%
Kumamoto City	¥8,217	¥200 / 2.4%	¥400 / 4.9%
Morioka City	¥7,154	¥200 / 2.8%	¥400 / 5.6%
Nasu Town (tiered, illustrative)	¥17,884	¥300 / 1.7%	¥200 / 1.1%

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team. Because Nasu Town’s band is set by the per-person, per-night accommodation charge excluding meals and consumption tax, the single-guest case is assumed to fall in the ¥10,000–20,000 band and the two-guest case in the under-¥10,000 band.

The design logic of the tiered scheme shows up clearly here. In the three flat-rate cities, the per-room tax rises in proportion to headcount, so the two-guest burden rate is exactly double the single-guest rate, at 4.9–5.6%. In Nasu Town, by contrast, the same per-room rate split between two guests lowers the per-person accommodation charge, which moves the tax band down a step. The result is a per-room burden rate of 1.1% for two guests — lighter than the 1.7% for a single guest. The more a property caters to families and groups, the relatively lighter the tiered scheme is; the higher the share of single occupancy, as at business locations, the more the weight of a flat rate shows.

That said, every one of these levels falls within 1–6% of the total payment for one night. Compared with municipalities using a percentage-of-price scheme, this is on the light side. Tokyo moves to a 3% percentage scheme on 1 April 2027, and the Hakone Town proposal put forward as an ordinary tax rather than an earmarked one offers another contrast — both are covered separately in our lodging tax coverage.

Seen from the property side, tax revenue creates a tourism budget worth millions of yen per property

All four lodging taxes are non-statutory earmarked taxes, restricted to tourism promotion. Kumamoto City will apply the revenue to new and expanded projects under its Kumamoto City Tourism Marketing Strategy; Miyazaki City to improving the reception environment, polishing tourism assets and promotion at home and abroad; Morioka City to raising the appeal of tourism assets and encouraging visits and exchange; and Nasu Town to polishing tourism assets and developing tourism infrastructure.

Read that from the property side and the picture changes. Dividing the reported revenue projections by the number of operating properties we track in each municipality gives a sense of the scale of tourism-promotion budget per property.

Table 4: Projected lodging tax revenue and tourism-promotion funding per property, converted using the property counts we track

Municipality	Projected revenue (full year)	Assumed taxable person-nights	Properties tracked	Per property
Kumamoto City	approx. ¥700 million/year	approx. 3.5 million	128	approx. ¥5.47 million
Miyazaki City	approx. ¥560 million/year	approx. 2.8 million	115	approx. ¥4.87 million
Morioka City	approx. ¥260 million/year	approx. 1.3 million	47	approx. ¥5.53 million
Nasu Town	¥114 million in year one	not converted (tiered scheme)	254	approx. ¥450,000

Source: revenue projections from the Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications consent documents (Miyazaki City, Morioka City) and press reports (Kumamoto City, Nasu Town); property counts from MetroEngines Research (properties confirmed as operating on OTAs as of July 2026), compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team

On these figures, tourism-promotion funding equivalent to roughly ¥5.47 million per property in Kumamoto City, ¥4.87 million in Miyazaki City and ¥5.53 million in Morioka City comes into being every year. Nasu Town works out to about ¥450,000 per property because it has as many as 254 of them — but its tiered design collects more heavily from the higher rate bands, so the funding pool grows as rates rise.

For properties, this is concrete upside. Promotion, secondary transport, multilingual support, Wi-Fi and signage, and the creation of destination-based content are all line items that are heavy for an individual property to fund alone, yet feed straight back into the value of the room once in place. Joining the forums that decide how lodging tax money is spent, and proposing projects that work on your own property’s demand funnel, is the most realistic way to get a return on the administrative work of collecting money held on deposit. In a market with few properties, such as Morioka City with 47, each property’s voice carries relatively more weight.

There is room on the pricing side too. The measurements here put ¥200 at 2.4–5.6% of per-room ADR. Small ancillary services such as breakfast and late checkout, meanwhile, are an area where a property can capture more than that. A tax that moves the guest’s total payment by a few percent is also an occasion to revisit the structure of the rate itself. In central Kumamoto City, for instance, supply has grown 26.0% above 2019 levels, so there is room on the market side to go after rate as well.

Conclusion — the effect of implementation shows up in spending, not in rates

Estimated settled ADR in Kumamoto City and Miyazaki City, which introduced a lodging tax on 1 July 2026, came in at −5.0% and −4.2% year on year in the implementation month. But in the same month untaxed Kagoshima City was −4.6%, Oita City −2.5% and Nikko City −10.3%: the two taxed cities’ movement sits entirely inside the band of the untaxed areas. Combined with a national lodging price index at +2.0%, the natural reading is that these four municipalities and their surroundings were in a soft phase during this period regardless of whether a tax applied.

That result is consistent with how the scheme is built. The lodging tax is money held on deposit under a special collection mechanism, settled outside the room rate. Looking for a trace of the tax in actual market rates over a span of a few months from implementation is therefore, from the outset, out of step with the design. What matters to a property is not the level of the rate but the workload at the front desk and where the revenue goes.

On 1 October, Morioka City and Nasu Town follow. Flat-rate Morioka City’s base level will not affect the tax amount, but in tiered Nasu Town the per-person, per-night accommodation charge (excluding meals and consumption tax) sets the band, so plan design and rate level feed directly into which tax band applies. After implementation we intend to track confirmed-basis year-on-year figures for these two municipalities within the same framework and revisit the question.

Related Reading

• Japan Lodging Tax 2026: All 62 Municipalities, Rates and ADR Burden
• Onsen Bathing Tax Rises: ¥350 Aizuwakamatsu, ¥300 Izu, 1.1–1.6% of ADR
• Tochigi Hotel ADR: 3.6x City Gap, Nasu ¥20,192 vs Utsunomiya ¥7,349
• Nasu vs Morioka Lodging Tax Oct 1: Tiered 1.0-3.0% vs Flat ¥200
• Iwate Hotel Market 2026: 2.2x ADR Gap, Morioka ¥200 Lodging Tax
• Kagoshima’s Capital Is Its Cheapest: ADR ¥6,819 vs Kirishima ¥14,330
• Japan Lodging Tax 2026: ¥100–200 per Night, Kyoto Up to ¥10,000