In the first half of December 2026 — peak bonenkai (year-end party) season in Japan — Friday-night stays are currently listed at a premium of +4–26% over the Wednesday of the same week. The premium varies widely by city and hotel type: Fukuoka City business hotels carry the thickest markup at +26%, while Tokyo 23-ward city hotels and Osaka City business hotels sit at just +4%. This article covers four markets — Tokyo’s 23 wards, Osaka City, Nagoya City and Fukuoka City — and 1,305 business hotels and 197 city hotels. We line up daily listed rates for the Fri/Sat pairs of Dec 4–5, 11–12 and 18–19 against the November comparison dates of Nov 6–7, 13–14 and 20–21, and check them against last year’s final rates for the same weeks to see whether the “Friday lift” is unique to this year or a recurring annual pattern. Christmas week (Dec 24–27) is excluded, as we have already covered it.

Conclusion — The Friday Markup Is a “City Pattern”; Early-December Levels Themselves Sit Below November

We summarize the conclusions in three points. First, on a three-Friday average, listed prices for early-December Friday stays are lower than November Fridays in every city and hotel type. For Tokyo 23-ward business hotels, the three-Friday average falls from ¥29,700 in November to ¥24,900 in December (−16.0%); Osaka City business hotels go from ¥18,200 to ¥15,300 (−15.7%), Nagoya City business hotels from ¥18,800 to ¥17,100 (−9.2%), and Fukuoka City business hotels from ¥28,600 to ¥28,200 (−1.5%). November forms the annual peak on autumn foliage and inbound visitors, and early December sits on the way down from that peak.

Second, Friday is nonetheless reliably marked up over the Wednesday of the same week, and the size of that markup is determined by the city. Current December Fri/Wed ratios line up at 1.26x for Fukuoka City business hotels, 1.07x for Nagoya City business hotels, 1.06x for Tokyo 23-ward business hotels and 1.04x for Osaka City business hotels; Fukuoka also stood out in last December’s final figures (1.22x). Third, in last year’s final rates, the December Fri/Wed ratio widened versus November in three cities — Tokyo, Nagoya and Fukuoka. In December, Wednesdays fall while Fridays hold up, so Friday’s relative premium grows as a result. This “weekdays fall, Friday holds” pattern is a fact observed in 2025, and current 2026 listings can be read as not yet having entered that stage.

Scope and Method — 1,502 Hotels in Four Markets, and Why We Read Only Listed Prices

The scope covers business hotels and city hotels tracked by MetroEngines Research that are located in Tokyo’s 23 wards, Osaka City, Nagoya City and Fukuoka City and confirmed to be operating. The number of hotels listing a price for Friday, December 4 was: Tokyo 23 wards — 522 business / 74 city; Osaka City — 219 business / 52 city; Nagoya City — 94 business / 12 city; Fukuoka City — 120 business / 14 city (all based on major booking-site listings). For each day, we took each hotel’s all-plan average price and used the median for that city and hotel type as the daily rate.

We should explain up front why this article does not use inventory-based metrics. December 4 is 48 days from the time of writing and December 19 is 63 days out, while the sales allotments loaded onto major booking sites only start to fill out around 45 days before the stay date. Changes in remaining rooms before that point merely reflect hotels adding or pulling allotments, not booking progress. We therefore used only two inputs: 2026 listed prices, and the final 2025 rates for the same weeks (the final listed price just before the stay date, plus monthly estimated settled ADR). The November dates, on the other hand, are 20–35 days out and have entered the phase where sales are progressing and the cheapest plans sell out first. When comparing 2026 listed prices for November and December, keep in mind that this difference in observation timing works to push the November side up.

Daily Rates (Business Hotels) — Fukuoka’s Dec 4 Is the Only Day Above November Fridays

Lining up daily listed medians for business hotels across the four cities, the weekly shape is the same everywhere: “Wednesday is the floor, Friday is one step up, and Saturday jumps sharply.” What differs is the height of that one step. In Tokyo’s 23 wards, the three December Fridays are ¥25,600, ¥25,200 and ¥24,000, a markup of ¥1,600–2,100 over the Wednesdays of the same weeks (¥23,500, ¥23,600 and ¥22,400). In Osaka City, Fridays are ¥15,800, ¥15,400 and ¥14,700, narrowing the gap with Wednesday to ¥500–1,600 — Friday is effectively sold as an extension of the weekday.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

Fukuoka City alone moves differently. The Friday, December 4 median of ¥33,500 exceeds all three November Fridays (¥26,900, ¥29,400 and ¥29,500) and reaches 1.69x the Wednesday’s ¥19,800. Behind this is a major concert scheduled at Mizuho PayPay Dome Fukuoka on December 4–6, and the following Saturday, December 5, at ¥44,700 is also the highest December Saturday. The Fridays without concerts, December 11 and 18, are ¥25,700 and ¥25,300 — Fukuoka’s “baseline Friday.” In Nagoya City, Friday, December 4 at ¥18,000 is slightly higher than the other Fridays (¥16,200 and ¥17,100), likely reflecting night-before demand ahead of the Vantelin Dome concert on Saturday the 5th.

Each cell is the median of tax-included listed prices (all-plan average, 2 guests per room) across hotels in scope. 2026 figures are listings as of October 17; “Same week LY” is the final listed price just before the stay date for the Friday of the same week in 2025 (Dec 5, 12 and 19). Based on major booking-site listings.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

Daily Rates (City Hotels) — A Thin Friday Markup; the Money Is Made on Saturday

City hotel rate levels are two to three times higher, but their relative Friday markup is thinner than for business hotels. Tokyo 23-ward city hotels list December Fridays at ¥44,400, ¥44,100 and ¥43,300, a gap of ¥1,900–2,800 over Wednesday (¥40,500–42,400), or 1.05–1.07x. Osaka City city hotels list Fridays at ¥24,600, ¥24,000 and ¥22,800, only ¥1,000–1,700 above Wednesday. Instead, they capture the upside on Saturday: Osaka City city hotels price Saturdays at ¥34,400, ¥33,800 and ¥32,500, around 1.4x Friday.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

Fukuoka City city hotels (N=14) list Friday, December 4 at ¥68,600, approaching the same week’s Saturday at ¥76,800 — the same concert effect seen in business hotels appears across hotel types. Nagoya City city hotels (N=12) have a small sample and a volatile median, but with Fridays at ¥30,600–34,200 against Saturdays at ¥50,600–53,600, the Sat/Fri step of around 1.5x matches last year’s pattern (1.49x). Friday at city hotels is a night linked to banquet-hall activity, but in room-rate terms it is currently positioned as “the night before Saturday,” one notch below Saturday — a picture common to all four cities. How far last December’s Fridays fell below Saturdays across five cities including Sapporo is laid out in Bonenkai 2026: Dec 25 Is Friday — Fridays Ran 15–42% Below Saturdays.

Each cell is the median of tax-included listed prices (all-plan average, 2 guests per room) across hotels in scope. 2026 figures are listings as of October 17; “Same week LY” is the final listed price just before the stay date for the Friday of the same week in 2025 (Dec 5, 12 and 19). Based on major booking-site listings.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

How the Friday Lift Differs by Hotel Type — Fri/Wed and Sat/Fri Measured on Same-Hotel Pairs

Because dividing one area median by another mixes in differences in hotel composition, from here we compute ratios from the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday listed prices of the same hotel in the same week, and compare their medians. In last December’s final rates, Fri/Wed for business hotels was 1.10x in Tokyo’s 23 wards, 1.08x in Osaka City, 1.12x in Nagoya City and 1.22x in Fukuoka City; for city hotels it was 1.07x in Tokyo’s 23 wards, 1.09x in Osaka City, 1.15x in Nagoya City and 1.23x in Fukuoka City. Fukuoka and Nagoya have thick Fridays regardless of hotel type, while Tokyo and Osaka are thin. The first finding is that the city difference is larger than the hotel-type difference. How widely day-of-week price gaps swing by market can also be seen across eight prefectures in Saturday 1.8x or 1.2x Tuesday: DOW Premium & NOI Across 2,153 Hotels.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

The hotel-type difference shows up in Sat/Fri instead. In December 2025, Sat/Fri for business hotels was 1.21x in Tokyo’s 23 wards, 1.45x in Osaka City, 1.57x in Nagoya City and 1.33x in Fukuoka City, versus 1.17x, 1.29x, 1.49x and 1.34x respectively for city hotels — outside Fukuoka, business hotels jump more on Saturday. Business hotels set weekday rates low and make it back on Saturday, while city hotels have a relatively gentler staircase from Wednesday to Saturday. In both hotel types Friday sits “closer to a weekday,” and a design that captures a large premium on Friday alone is not mainstream in any city.

Ratios are computed hotel by hotel from the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday listed prices of the same week, and the median is shown (three weeks; the number of hotel×week pairs is in the rightmost column). 2025 uses final listed prices just before the stay date; 2026 uses listed prices as of October 17.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

Comparison with the Same Weeks Last Year — December Below November Is the Annual Pattern, and Friday’s Premium Grows in December

To check whether early-December rates falling below November is unique to this year, we compare the November→December change in prefecture-level estimated settled ADR (confirmed months) over two years. In 2024, business hotels changed −3.3% in Tokyo, −0.9% in Osaka, −4.0% in Aichi and −0.6% in Fukuoka; in 2025, in the same order, −8.0%, −8.7%, −8.7% and −10.0% — December was lower in every case. City hotels were similar, except Tokyo (+3.2%) and Osaka (+1.9%) in 2024, and in 2025 all four prefectures were down 3.7–12.0%. The higher November’s peak, as in 2025, the bigger the December drop. The drop shown by current 2026 listings (−1.5% to −19.8% on a three-Friday average), considering also that the November side was observed closer to the stay date, falls within a range from last year’s level to somewhat larger.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

The Friday markup itself can also be tested against last year’s final rates. In 2025, Fri/Wed was wider in December than in November in three cities: Tokyo 23-ward business hotels went from 1.04x in November to 1.10x in December, Nagoya City business hotels from 1.07x to 1.12x, and Fukuoka City business hotels from 1.19x to 1.22x. City hotels moved the same way: Tokyo’s 23 wards 1.03x→1.07x, Nagoya City 1.09x→1.15x, Fukuoka City 1.15x→1.23x. Only Osaka City narrowed slightly, with business hotels at 1.10x→1.08x and city hotels at 1.10x→1.09x.

Comparing this with current 2026 listings, December Fri/Wed is 1.06x for Tokyo 23-ward business hotels and 1.07x for Nagoya City business hotels — 0.03–0.04 points thinner than last year’s final rates. This contrasts with November’s Fri/Wed (1.08x for Tokyo’s 23 wards, 1.16x for Nagoya City), which already exceeds last November’s final rates, suggesting December Fridays are still at the stage of being “set mechanically at the same ratio as November.” If last year’s path is repeated, December Fridays will gain relative thickness as Wednesdays come down. The gap between weekdays, when year-end business travel thins out, and Fridays, when bonenkai parties, fan travel and night-before stays overlap, shapes this season’s price structure.

Estimated settled ADR (tax-excluded equivalent, area median) for confirmed months. Because this is at the prefecture level, the population is broader than the four cities. N = number of hotels in scope (based on major booking-site listings).

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

The Scale of Bonenkai Demand and How to Treat Event Dates

The scale of demand on the banquet side can be confirmed from last year’s published figures. In Tokyo Shoko Research’s December 2025 survey (6,196 companies), 57.2% of companies planned to hold year-end or New Year parties, slightly below the previous year’s 59.6% and short of the pre-pandemic 2019 level (78.4%). Since stays tied to banquets are limited to some of those companies, it is reasonable to view bonenkai parties themselves as having limited power to push up Friday room rates; indeed, even in Fukuoka City, where December Fri/Wed is thickest, the markup on the concert-free Fridays of December 11 and 18 is just 1.19x. What actually moves the daily medians is night-before and same-night stays for major concerts, and for the dates in this article we confirmed the following combinations.

Concert schedules are based on each venue’s published schedule and concert information sites (checked October 17, 2026; subject to change). Listed medians are for business hotels, 2 guests per room, tax included, as of October 17.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

Tokyo’s 23 wards have Tokyo Dome concerts on December 5 and 19, but business hotel Saturday medians are nearly flat at ¥34,100, ¥33,900 and ¥32,900; demand on the scale of a 55,000-seat venue is not enough to move the median of 522 hotels. In Nagoya City, the concert Saturdays of December 5 and 19 are ¥33,000 and ¥33,000 versus ¥28,600 on the concert-free 12th, a gap of around ¥4,500, and in Fukuoka City the difference extends to Friday as well (although, within Fukuoka, the Saturday median on December 19, the TOMORROW X TOGETHER concert date, is ¥40,700 — below the concert-free 12th — so the effect appeared only for the Snow Man concerts on December 4–5). The smaller the market, the more a single venue shows up in the median, so in Nagoya and Fukuoka there is high value in building December pricing separately for event dates and non-event dates.

What Operators Can Do — Set Wednesday First, Place Friday by Ratio, Lock In Saturday

Order: Wednesday → Friday → Saturday. What should be decided first in early-December pricing is Wednesday, not Friday. In last year’s final rates, Wednesday fell from November by 12.9% for Tokyo 23-ward business hotels, 16.2% for Osaka City business hotels and 7.9% for Fukuoka City business hotels. It fits reality to set December Wednesdays first — in Tokyo and Osaka as “weekdays 10–20% below November,” and in Fukuoka and Nagoya (Nagoya City business hotels: −2.1%) as “weekdays slightly below November.” Then set Friday as a multiple of Wednesday. Use last December’s final rates as a guide: business hotels at 1.10x in Tokyo’s 23 wards, 1.08x in Osaka City, 1.12x in Nagoya City and 1.22x in Fukuoka City; city hotels from 1.07x (Tokyo 23 wards) to 1.23x (Fukuoka City). Hotels whose current Fri/Wed is thinner than this have room to move toward last year’s ratio by not dragging Friday down along with Wednesday when they cut Wednesday rates.

The day when banquet-plus-stay demand can be expected. Friday is the night when banquet halls are busiest, but its markup on room rates is less than half of Saturday’s in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, and just under 70% of Saturday’s even in Fukuoka. City hotel Fri/Wed is 1.07–1.23x and Sat/Fri 1.17–1.49x across the four cities. To capture banquet guests’ stays on Friday, offering room allotments at the moment banquet bookings are taken and channeling part of the inventory through banquet sales works better on both rate and occupancy than raising prices. Because Friday in Tokyo and Osaka sits in a weekday-level price band, concentrating banquet-linked stays on Friday does not cannibalize high-rate weekend demand.

A guide to holding back or releasing Friday inventory. The dates covered here are still more than 45 days out, so it is too early to judge from remaining-room levels. As a pricing guide, the first step is to separate Fridays that coincide with concerts (Fukuoka Dec 4, and the night-before for Nagoya on Dec 4) from those that do not. The former can expect Saturday-level demand, so not widening cheap-plan allotments until inside 45 days and selling at the same pace as Saturday is consistent with last year’s final rates. For the latter, given that last December’s Fridays landed at 1.08–1.22x Wednesday and thickened versus November in three cities other than Osaka, not extending Wednesday pricing to Friday is the simplest way to protect Friday rates. The fact that November Fridays (20–35 days out) are already selling at ratios above last year’s final rates suggests the same room exists for December Fridays.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Will early-December Fridays be priced higher than November Fridays?

In current listed prices, December Fridays are below November Fridays in all four cities and both hotel types. In confirmed-month estimated settled ADR as well, December was lower than November in both 2024 and 2025 — this is the annual pattern. The exception is dates that coincide with major concerts (in 2026, December 4 in Fukuoka City), which are listed above November Friday levels.

Q. What multiple of Wednesday’s price should Friday be set at?

In last December’s final rates, business hotels were at 1.10x in Tokyo’s 23 wards, 1.08x in Osaka City, 1.12x in Nagoya City and 1.22x in Fukuoka City, and city hotels at 1.07–1.23x. Because these ratios are measured within the same hotel in the same week, you can apply them to your own Wednesday price.

Q. Why doesn’t this article use inventory or booking curves?

At the time of writing, early-December stay dates are 48–63 days out, and remaining inventory more than 45 days before the stay date includes the state before sales allotments are loaded, so it does not reflect booking progress. This article therefore uses only listed prices and confirmed rates for the same period last year.

Summary

Early-December Fridays are not as expensive on their own as the term “bonenkai season” might suggest. In all four cities, December Fridays are below November Fridays, and the markup over the same week’s Wednesday is +4–26%, a range determined more by city than by hotel type. Fukuoka and Nagoya have thick Fridays; Tokyo and Osaka thin ones. However, as last year’s final rates show, in December Wednesdays fall while Fridays hold up, so Friday’s relative premium grows beyond November’s. Current 2026 listings are not there yet, and the most realistic pricing design that can be built before the 45-day mark is to set Wednesday first, place Friday by ratio, and treat only concert-date Fridays the same as Saturday.