“Long-stay hotel” is not the name of a single format. A conventional hotel that offers monthly and weekly plans, an apartment hotel with a kitchen and a washer-dryer, a serviced apartment designed around stays of 30 nights or more — these three differ far more in contract form, billing unit and pricing behaviour than they do in how the room looks. This article sets out where the lines fall between the three formats, lays the brands side by side using the figures each operator publishes, and measures what 30 nights actually cost at 13 Tokyo properties using listed rates.

The three long-stay formats — the dividing line is the contract and the billing unit, not the room

The first thing needed when handling the long-stay segment is to draw the line between formats. In practice it is easiest to split them three ways. For how a product that lets you stay a month straight with no lease actually works, see What is a monthly hotel? A month-long consecutive stay with no lease, which also sets out indicative costs.

First, the monthly/weekly-plan hotel. It uses ordinary hotel rooms as they are and sets up consecutive-stay plans of 7, 14 or 30 nights. Capital expenditure is small, so an existing accommodation-led hotel can enter as it stands. Because inventory is shared with nightly retail sales, the property can prioritise short-stay demand in peak periods and fill the trough with long stays.

Second, the apartment hotel. Rooms come with a kitchen, refrigerator and washer-dryer, and are designed at more than 40 sq m with capacity for four to six guests. They are operated under the same Hotel Business Act licence as a conventional hotel, but because the room is configured closer to a home, they can go directly after mid-length stays by families and groups.

Third, the serviced apartment. This format puts the length of stay itself at the centre of product design, and includes properties that set a minimum number of nights. Oakwood Oimachi Tracks Tokyo (78 rooms), opened by Ascott Japan on 25 June 2026, is a long-stay-only serviced residence restricted to stays of 30 nights or more, with units ranging from studios of about 27 sq m to three-bedroom apartments of 107 sq m (company news release).

What is easily overlooked in practice here is the tax treatment. The National Tax Agency’s tax answer “Leasing of housing” (No. 6226) states explicitly that the leasing of facilities used in the hotel business as defined in Article 2, Paragraph 1 of the Hotel Business Act is outside the scope of the exemption, and that “inns, hotels, rental villas, resort condominiums, weekly apartments and the like are not exempt even where the period of use is one month or longer.” In other words, all three formats covered here remain taxable transactions beyond one month, and are different in accounting character from a monthly apartment let under a lease (leasing of housing). The reason corporates choose them for business-trip and relocation expense claims is rooted not only in the rate level but in this difference of contract form.

Table 1: Comparison points across the three long-stay hotel formats

Point of comparison	Monthly / weekly-plan hotel	Apartment hotel	Serviced apartment
Contract	Accommodation contract (Hotel Business Act)	Accommodation contract (Hotel Business Act)	Accommodation contract (Hotel Business Act). Some properties are long-stay only
Consumption tax	All are taxable even on stays of a month or more (National Tax Agency No. 6226). A monthly apartment under a lease is exempt as leasing of housing
Room facilities	Ordinary hotel rooms. Shared laundry is the norm	Kitchen and washer-dryer fitted as standard inside the room	Kitchen and washer-dryer plus a unit mix from studio to multiple bedrooms
Minimum nights	From one night. Consecutive-stay plans at 7, 14 or 30 nights	From one night	Some properties restrict to 30 nights or more
Billing unit (measured)	Tends to track party size (see below)	Tends to be a flat per-room rate (see below)	Varies by unit type
Expected stay	Business trips, construction work, training, exam travel	Family and group travel, mid-length stays	Relocation, accompanying family, long projects

Source: National Tax Agency tax answer No. 6226 and operator disclosures, compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team

The main brands in each format — laid out using the figures each operator publishes

Next, what brands exist in Japan under each of the three formats, side by side. The property and room counts given here are quoted exactly as each operator publishes them. Some count directly operated properties only, others include franchised or partner properties and group companies, so the counting definitions are not aligned. This table is therefore a list for grasping each operator’s footprint, not a comparison of scale.

Table 2: Main brands by format and what each operator publishes (side by side, no ranking)

Format	Brand / operator	What the operator publishes
Monthly / weekly-plan hotel	APA Hotel	Publicises a monthly plan on its official site allowing 30 consecutive nights at the same hotel. Runs a dedicated page aimed at long business trips
	Tokyu Stay	Rooms fitted with a washer-dryer; officially offers mid-to-long-stay plans of up to 31 nights and a flat-rate long-stay plan
	Dormy Inn (Kyoritsu Maintenance)	Officially promotes weekly and monthly use as “urban workation” at properties with a large public bath
	hotel MONday / ICI HOTEL (JHAT)	Weekly and monthly plans set in three bands: from 7, from 14 and from 30 nights. States a 10% discount off the standard rate, zero deposit and key money, and utilities and Wi-Fi included
	Weekly Sho (Kibousha)	Opened 2001. Targets “a place to stay from a week to several months” and officially advertises a single rate for all 365 days that does not change between peak and off-peak
Apartment hotel	MIMARU (Cosmos Hotel Management / Daiwa House Group)	Its official site lists 29 properties in total: 15 in Tokyo, 7 in Kyoto and 7 in Osaka. Rooms run about 40–100 sq m with capacity up to 10 guests. MIMARU Osaka Shinsaibashi Central (66 rooms), opening 1 September 2026, takes the total to 1,500 rooms, and the group has announced it is restarting new openings toward 3,000 rooms by 2030
	MONday Apart / GRAND MONday (JHAT)	Apartment-type rooms with a kitchen and a fully automatic washing machine. GRAND MONday Asakusa was rebranded from MONday Apart Premium Asakusa on 1 April 2026 and announced as the second property of the group’s top brand, with all rooms in suite specification
	GRAND BASE (REQREA)	Publishes 50 locations across 12 cities nationwide, centred on western Japan. Rooms have a kitchen and washing machine; the brand advertises more than twice the space of a typical business hotel and unstaffed front-desk operation
	Minn (SQUEEZE)	Publishes that it plans and operates apartment-type rooms with kitchens and similar facilities, aimed at group and family stays
Serviced apartment	Ascott / Somerset / Citadines / Oakwood / lyf (Ascott Japan)	Publishes that it operates 5 brands and 21 properties in Japan (as of its March 2026 news release). Consolidated the brands following its 2022 acquisition of Oakwood
	Oakwood Oimachi Tracks Tokyo	Opened 25 June 2026, 78 rooms. Long-stay only from 30 nights, with studios to three-bedroom units of about 27–107 sq m

Source: operator official sites and news releases, compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (figures quoted exactly as each operator publishes them; counting definitions differ by operator)

Measuring 30 nights at 13 Tokyo properties — ¥13,700 to ¥82,900 a night

So what does 30 nights actually cost? We selected 13 properties in Tokyo covering all three formats and, for 30 consecutive nights from 1 to 30 June 2026, summed the price of the cheapest plan listed for each stay date (2 guests per room, per-room rate, tax included). Every property had an observable price on all 30 nights (N = 30 nights per property, 390 property-days in total).

Check-in 1–30 June 2026; sum over 30 nights of the lowest listed plan for each day (2 guests per room, per-room rate, tax included) / N = 13 properties x 30 nights. Source: MetroEngines Research, compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team

The results ranged from ¥13,700 to ¥82,900 a night, and from ¥411,800 to ¥2,487,900 over the full 30 nights. What is worth noting is that the format label and the price band do not map one to one. The cheapest was Minn Kasai (55 rooms, ¥411,800 over 30 nights), which is classed as an apartment hotel, sitting at almost the same level as ICI HOTEL ASAKUSABASHI (103 rooms, ¥413,300) and hotel MONday Premium Toyosu (263 rooms, ¥415,100), both of which use ordinary hotel rooms. Meanwhile lyf Ginza Tokyo (140 rooms, ¥605,400), a serviced apartment, comes in at less than a quarter of Ascott Marunouchi Tokyo (130 rooms, ¥2,487,900) in the same class. The format name is a label for the design intent; it is more accurate to read the price band as being set by location and unit size.

Table 3: 30 nights measured at 13 Tokyo properties (check-in 1–30 June 2026, lowest listed rate, 2 guests per room, tax included)

Format	Property	Rooms	Per night	30-night total	Coefficient of variation	Fri/Sat uplift
Monthly-plan	ICI HOTEL ASAKUSABASHI (イチホテル浅草橋)	103	¥13,778	¥413,334	27.0%	+55.6%
Monthly-plan	hotel MONday Premium Toyosu (Hotel MONday豊洲)	263	¥13,836	¥415,072	36.5%	+74.6%
Monthly-plan	ICI HOTEL UENO SHIN OKACHIMACHI (イチホテル上野新御徒町)	108	¥14,121	¥423,630	30.3%	+64.1%
Monthly-plan	hotel MONday Asakusa (HOTEL MONday 浅草)	115	¥16,611	¥498,322	29.4%	+57.1%
Apartment	Minn Kasai (Minn 葛西)	55	¥13,727	¥411,800	27.1%	+54.0%
Apartment	MIMARU Tokyo Ueno North (MIMARU東京 上野NORTH)	40	¥56,858	¥1,705,740	18.2%	+32.5%
Apartment	GRAND MONday Asakusa (GRAND MONday 浅草)	25	¥61,569	¥1,847,068	27.6%	+39.0%
Apartment	MIMARU Tokyo Hatchobori (MIMARU東京 八丁堀)	74	¥71,013	¥2,130,400	17.4%	+25.6%
Apartment	MIMARU Tokyo Akasaka (MIMARU東京 赤坂)	40	¥73,243	¥2,197,300	12.8%	+13.6%
Serviced apartment	lyf Ginza Tokyo (lyf銀座東京)	140	¥20,180	¥605,388	18.4%	+26.4%
Serviced apartment	Citadines Shinjuku Tokyo (シタディーン新宿東京)	160	¥27,462	¥823,872	15.7%	+9.5%
Serviced apartment	Oakwood Hotel & Apartments Azabu Tokyo (オークウッドホテル&アパートメンツ麻布)	171	¥36,327	¥1,089,812	8.3%	+11.7%
Serviced apartment	Ascott Marunouchi Tokyo (アスコット丸の内東京)	130	¥82,928	¥2,487,850	8.2%	-0.6%

Check-in 1–30 June 2026; lowest listed plan for each day (2 guests per room, per-room rate, tax included) / N = 30 nights x 13 properties. Coefficient of variation = the spread of the 30 nightly prices divided by their mean. Source: MetroEngines Research, compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team

Note that apartment-type and serviced-apartment rooms are mostly designed at 40–100 sq m with capacity for four to six guests, so both space and capacity differ from an ordinary hotel room. Reading the per-room price gap straight across as “expensive” is not appropriate.

What separates the formats is how day of week bites — a Fri/Sat uplift of 60.6% against 10.6%

The format difference showed up more clearly in how price moved across the 30 nights than in the absolute level. Taking the “Fri/Sat uplift” — the average for Friday and Saturday check-ins against the average for the other days — the median by format steps cleanly down: +60.6% for monthly/weekly-plan hotels, +32.5% for apartment hotels and +10.6% for serviced apartments. The coefficient of variation across the 30 nights narrows in the same order, at 29.9%, 18.2% and 12.0%.

Check-in 1–30 June 2026; index with each property’s weekday median = 100 / N = 3 properties x 30 nights. Source: MetroEngines Research, compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team

The chart above takes one property from each format and plots the 30 nights with the weekday median set to 100. hotel MONday Premium Toyosu swings from 79 to 265, reaching 2.65 times its weekday level on Saturday 20 June. MIMARU Tokyo Akasaka runs from 68 to 128, and Oakwood Hotel & Apartments Azabu Tokyo sits almost entirely within a band of 100 to 130, with 12 of the 30 nights at exactly the same price. A 30-night stay spans eight or nine weekends, so this difference feeds straight through to the total.

The more a property is designed to make long stays its main business, the more it holds a steady level rather than swinging price by day of week — and that pattern reads as a deliberate pricing stance. Weekly Sho’s official single rate for all 365 days, which “does not change between peak and off-peak”, is the extreme form of the same idea. For the guest the total is easy to read; for the operator, long-stay inventory is locked in early. Put the other way, a hotel that swings hard by day of week and wants to win long stays has room to combine a design that does not give up the high weekend rate — opening weekends to short-stay demand, or restricting which dates a consecutive-stay plan applies to.

One format does not change the room price even when four people stay

Another clear divider between the formats is the billing unit. Among the same 13 properties, for those where a price could be confirmed on searches for one, two and four guests, we lined up the 30-night average of the lowest listed price by party size.

Check-in 1–30 June 2026; 30-night average of the lowest listed price under search conditions of one, two and four guests / N = 7 properties x 30 nights. Source: MetroEngines Research, compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team

MIMARU Tokyo Hatchobori comes out at exactly ¥71,000 for one, two and four guests alike, and MIMARU Tokyo Ueno North holds all three conditions within one yen of each other at about ¥56,900. MIMARU Tokyo Akasaka and GRAND MONday Asakusa stopped at 1.02 and 1.04 times the two-guest level at four guests. Because a large unit with a kitchen is sold as a single room, the room price does not move as the party grows. Used by four, the per-person rate falls to a quarter — about ¥17,800 per person per night at MIMARU Tokyo Hatchobori.

By contrast, hotel MONday Premium Toyosu, which uses ordinary hotel rooms, goes from ¥13,800 at two guests to ¥33,900 at four (about 2.5 times), and hotel MONday Asakusa from ¥16,600 to ¥33,100 (about twice), switching up to a higher room type as the party grows. Serviced apartments also move with party size, because units are tiered from studio to multiple bedrooms: Ascott Marunouchi Tokyo was ¥82,900 at two guests against ¥236,200 at four. Minn Kasai sits in between at 1.20 times.

Re-cut to a “per person per night” basis, the same measurements show the difference in billing unit clearly as a cost to the guest. At the three MIMARU properties and GRAND MONday Asakusa, which are close to a flat per-room rate, the per-person rate at four guests falls to about 0.5 times the two-guest level. At hotel MONday Premium Toyosu, which switches up to a higher room type as the party grows, the per-person rate at four guests rises to 1.23 times the two-guest level, while hotel MONday Asakusa is essentially unchanged at 1.00.

Table 4: Rate per person per night by party size (June 2026; 30-night average of the lowest listed price divided by party size)

Format	Property	1 guest	2 guests	4 guests	4 guests / 2 guests
Apartment	MIMARU Tokyo Akasaka	¥74,493	¥36,622	¥18,623	0.51x
Apartment	MIMARU Tokyo Hatchobori	¥71,013	¥35,507	¥17,753	0.50x
Apartment	GRAND MONday Asakusa	¥61,569	¥30,785	¥15,972	0.52x
Apartment	MIMARU Tokyo Ueno North	¥56,858	¥28,429	¥14,214	0.50x
Apartment	Minn Kasai	¥13,770	¥6,864	¥4,117	0.60x
Monthly-plan	hotel MONday Asakusa	¥16,474	¥8,306	¥8,282	1.00x
Monthly-plan	hotel MONday Premium Toyosu	¥13,450	¥6,918	¥8,475	1.23x

Check-in 1–30 June 2026; the 30-night average of the lowest listed price (per room, tax included) under search conditions of one, two and four guests, divided by party size as a simple calculation / N = 7 properties x 30 nights. At four guests the room type differs by property. Source: MetroEngines Research, compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team

Seen from the demand side of the segment, this difference in billing unit maps directly onto whose budget pays for the stay. A hotel that tracks party size is efficient for the solo business traveller; a flat per-room rate works for accompanying families and multi-person project teams. From an operating and investment standpoint, making rooms larger is a lever that not only raises the per-room rate but widens the range of party sizes a single room can take.

Demand backdrop — 9.5 nights on average for inbound visitors, 646 nomad visas, and the trough and peak of the market

The tailwinds behind the long-stay segment come from several directions. According to the Japan Tourism Agency’s Consumption Trend Survey for Foreigners Visiting Japan for calendar 2025 (released 21 January 2026), travel spending per inbound visitor was ¥229,000 (+0.9% year on year) and total travel consumption was ¥9.4559 trillion (+16.4%), both record highs. The average number of nights stayed came to 9.5 overall, 0.5 nights longer than the previous year, and by nationality there are long-stay markets such as France at 18.4 nights and Germany at 18.0 nights. By expenditure category, accommodation is the largest item at 36.6% (¥3.4617 trillion). The longer a stay runs, the more “the total for 30 nights” and “can I cook and do laundry” rise up the decision criteria, ahead of per-night comfort.

On the policy side there is the framework for digital nomads under the “Designated Activities” residence status, which began operating in March 2024. On a tally based on Ministry of Foreign Affairs visa-issuance statistics, issuances rose 2.51 times, from 257 in 2024 (the nine months from 31 March) to 646 in 2025 (Japan Digital Nomad Association, released 3 August 2026). Because the permitted period of stay is six months at most with no renewal, it fits demand to stay under an accommodation contract rather than a lease with a residence registration. The absolute numbers are still small, but the growth rate and the length of stay are hard to ignore when designing the product on the host side.

Domestic demand is persistent too. Just as Weekly Sho began in 2001 from the idea of “building somewhere construction workers could stay cheaply”, businesses that involve a physical site — construction, plant work, power — generate accommodation demand continuously in units of weeks to months. In recent years there have also been more projects, offshore wind among them, where mid-length-stay demand builds up intensively in a specific regional area around a designated base port. In search behaviour too, queries comparing long-stay hotels and brands occur in steady volume, showing that an audience looking for this information genuinely exists.

That said, the total cost of a long stay tracks the market itself closely. Tokyo ADR (estimated settled rate) was ¥12,100 in June 2026 (N = 1,137 properties), the trough of the year, against ¥18,800 in October (N = 1,097 properties) — more than 50% higher. June was chosen for the measurement here in order to hold all 13 properties to the same condition, the trough of the market. For reference, aggregating 30 nights of October check-ins at the same 13 properties, the four monthly/weekly-plan hotels moved +69.6% to +74.8% on the total. Treating long stays only as “stable, resilient demand” means missing how the level shifts with the season.

January 2025 – December 2026; Tokyo ADR (estimated settled rate, median of the properties covered) / N = 1,034–1,151 properties. Source: MetroEngines Research, compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team

Implications for operators and investors

First, listed rates on OTAs and the operators’ own monthly-plan rates are different things. What this article measured is the listed rate sold in single nights; the long-stay-specific rates the hotel MONday group states as “10% off the standard rate, zero deposit and key money, utilities and Wi-Fi included” sit in a separate sales design centred on the official site. If you are going after long stays, having a direct-sales route separate from listed inventory translates straight into a margin difference.

Second, long stays leave room to change the operating cost structure. If cleaning can be designed at once or twice a week, labour hours compress, and the number of check-ins and check-outs per room falls sharply. As GRAND BASE’s unstaffed front-desk operation shows, labour-saving and long stays fit well together by design. Filling the occupancy trough with long stays is a realistic upside for existing hotels as well.

Third, pricing. What the measurements showed is that the more a property commits to long stays, the less it moves price by day of week. That is also a choice not to chase the weekend rate on short-stay demand, so it is not a question of which is correct. What matters is building the applicable days and minimum nights of a consecutive-stay plan with a clear view of which design you are competing on. Given that eight or nine weekends fall within 30 nights, offering a consecutive-stay discount without first deciding how weekends are handled leaves the total looking incoherent.

Fourth, from an investment standpoint, the design of room area and capacity drives the payback scenario. A flat per-room format does not change price when used by four, so it can hold a high per-room rate, but it competes less well for the solo business-trip demand pool. A party-size-linked format reaches a wider audience, but its per-room ceiling is bound by the size of the room. As MIMARU’s stated target of 3,000 rooms by 2030 shows, growth in this segment is becoming an argument about how many rooms of what size to stack, rather than how many buildings to put up. Per-unit-area profitability also differs sharply between central business locations and resort locations, which is where the area design and the target rate have to be decided together.

Summary

Long-stay hotels can be organised into three formats: monthly/weekly-plan hotels, apartment hotels and serviced apartments. All are accommodation contracts under the Hotel Business Act and all remain taxable transactions beyond one month, but the design of minimum nights and the billing unit differ substantially. Measuring 30 nights at 13 Tokyo properties, the price band spread from ¥13,700 to ¥82,900 a night, and the format label did not necessarily match the price band. On the other hand, the Fri/Sat uplift (median +60.6% / +32.5% / +10.6%) and the way price moves with party size split clearly by format, confirming that the more a property is optimised for long stays, the more it levels its pricing and sells at a flat per-room rate. With the average stay by inbound visitors stretching to 9.5 nights and the digital-nomad residence framework growing 2.5 times, deciding first which format to design as is, for this segment, the same decision as designing both the pricing and the cost structure.