How many ryokan and hotels are there in Japan? The official answer sits in the annual edition of the Report on Public Health Administration and Services (衛生行政報告例), which the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) publishes every autumn. According to the FY2024 annual report released on October 21, 2025, the number of facilities holding a business permit under the Inns and Hotels Act stood at 98,338 as of the end of March 2025 (end of FY2024), up 4,863 (5.2%) from the end of the previous fiscal year. The breakdown is 52,946 ryokan/hotel operations, 44,901 simple lodging (kan’i shukusho) operations and 491 boarding-house operations, and ryokan/hotel operations account for 1,780,679 guest rooms. This article sets out how the statistic is defined, how it has moved since 1965, how it breaks down by prefecture, and why it “doesn’t add up” against the Japan Tourism Agency’s Overnight Travel Statistics Survey and the count of properties listed on booking sites — and then shows how operators and investors should use each figure when reading area supply.

The main data in this article is the FY2024 annual edition of the MHLW Report on Public Health Administration and Services (government statistics code 00450027); figures are reproduced exactly as in the original tables. Where we have calculated values ourselves, such as shares or rooms per property, the formula is shown in the text. This article does not deal with price or occupancy metrics, but the metric definitions used across HotelBank articles are standardized as follows.

The Direct Answer — 98,338 Licensed Facilities and 1.78 Million Rooms at the End of March 2025

First, the latest figures as they stand. The Report on Public Health Administration and Services compiles what prefectures, cities with public health centers and Tokyo’s special wards report to the MHLW about permits granted under the Inns and Hotels Act, and it counts the stock as of the end of each fiscal year (March 31). At the end of FY2024 the lodging business comprised 98,338 facilities: 52,946 ryokan/hotel operations (+1,908 or +3.7% year on year), 44,901 simple lodging operations (+2,992 or +7.1%) and 491 boarding-house operations (−37 or −7.0%). Room counts are published only for ryokan/hotel operations, at 1,780,679 rooms (+3,685 from 1,776,994 in the previous year).

The point to note is that simple lodgings account for over 60% of the increase. Of the total increase of 4,863 facilities, 2,992 were simple lodgings, and the simple lodging share of the total rose to 45.7% (= 44,901 ÷ 98,338). At the end of FY2014 the same share was 33.4% (= 26,349 ÷ 78,898), so it has risen 12 points in 10 years. Meanwhile, the room count grew only 0.2%: over the latest year the picture is “more properties, but roughly flat room count.”

Note: “Lodging business total” is the sum of the three categories (our calculation). “Rooms per property” = rooms of ryokan/hotel operations ÷ number of such facilities; “Simple lodging share” = simple lodging operations ÷ lodging business total (both our calculations). Room counts are published for ryokan/hotel operations only.

Source: compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team from MHLW, Report on Public Health Administration and Services (FY2024 annual report)

Note that the MHLW’s “Overview of the Inns and Hotels Act” page still shows the end-March 2024 figures (93,475 facilities, including 51,038 ryokan/hotel operations and 41,909 simple lodgings) at the time of writing; these are the previous fiscal year-end values. The figures for the end of FY2025 (end of March 2026) are expected, if the usual schedule holds, in the annual report released in late October 2026 or later, and had not been published as of writing (October 24, 2026).

Definitions — The Three Permit Categories Under the Inns and Hotels Act and the June 15, 2018 Merger

Before reading the counts, it is worth confirming what is being counted. The Inns and Hotels Act defines the lodging business as “the business of providing facilities and lodging people for a fee,” and currently divides it into three permit categories. “Ryokan/hotel operations” covers everything other than simple lodging and boarding houses; “simple lodging operations” covers facilities whose structure and equipment are mainly shared by many guests (guesthouses, capsule hotels, mountain huts and the like); and “boarding-house operations” covers lodging provided in units of one month or longer. Permits are issued by prefectural governors (or, in cities with public health centers and Tokyo’s special wards, by their mayors), and operators must meet structural, equipment and hygiene standards.

What matters most for reading the long-term series is the amended Inns and Hotels Act (Act No. 84 of 2017), which took effect on June 15, 2018. This amendment merged the formerly separate categories of “hotel operations” (mainly Western-style structure and equipment) and “ryokan operations” (mainly Japanese-style) into “ryokan/hotel operations.” At the same time, an amendment to the enforcement order abolished the minimum room counts (10 rooms for hotels, 5 for ryokan) and unified the minimum floor area per room at 7㎡ or more (9㎡ or more for rooms with beds). The supplementary table of the report also notes that “‘ryokan/hotel operations’ for FY2017 and earlier is the sum of ‘hotel operations’ and ‘ryokan operations,'” so the series up to FY2017 and from FY2018 cannot simply be joined to conclude that “ryokan declined” or “hotels increased.”

One more point: figures up to 1996 are calendar-year (end of December) values, and figures from FY1997 are fiscal-year (end of March) values. The chart draws them as one continuous line, but bear in mind there is a three-month gap between 1996 and FY1997.

Long-Term Trend — Reading Pre-Merger (to FY2017) and Post-Merger (from FY2018) Separately

Putting the 60 years from 1965 to FY2024 on a single chart reveals the structural change in the lodging business.Ryokan operations peaked at 83,226 facilities in 1980 and fell to 38,622 by FY2017.Hotel operations grew steadily from 258 facilities in 1965 to 10,402 in FY2017. After the merger, “ryokan/hotel operations” bottomed at 49,502 facilities at the end of FY2018 and then moved sideways — 51,004 in FY2019, 50,703 in FY2020, 50,523 in FY2021 and 50,321 in FY2022 — before rising for two consecutive years to 51,038 in FY2023 and 52,946 in FY2024.

Simple lodgings have followed a different path.Through the 1990s and 2000s they moved within a narrow range of 22,000–27,000 facilities, butstarting from 26,349 in FY2014 they have increased every year, reaching 44,901 at the end of FY2024 — 1.7 times as many in 10 years. Boarding houses fell from 2,333 in 1965 to 491, just 0.5% of the lodging business as a whole.

Figure 1: Licensed Lodging Facilities, 1965 to End of FY2024

Note: Values up to 1996 are calendar year-end; from FY1997, fiscal year-end (end of March). Under the amended Inns and Hotels Act effective June 15, 2018, “hotel operations” and “ryokan operations” were merged into “ryokan/hotel operations,” so the two series up to FY2017 and the single series from FY2018 are not continuous.

Source: compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team from MHLW, Report on Public Health Administration and Services (FY2024 annual report)

Room counts move in the opposite direction to facility counts. Rooms in ryokan/hotel operations (hotel plus ryokan operations before the merger) have grown continuously from 632,518 in 1965 to 1,780,679 at the end of FY2024.While the number of facilities fell by about 30,000 from the 1980 peak,rooms increased by 1.15 million, and rooms per property (= rooms ÷ facilities, our calculation) grew from 9.3 in 1965 to 21.5 in FY2000, 27.7 in FY2010, 32.6 in FY2017 and 33.6 in FY2024. This single metric tells the story of half a century of scaling up, as small ryokan exited and hotels with more rooms entered.

Figure 2: Rooms in Ryokan/Hotel Operations and Rooms per Property, 1965 to End of FY2024

Note: Rooms are for ryokan/hotel operations (the sum of hotel and ryokan operations up to FY2017). Rooms per property = rooms ÷ facilities (our calculation). Room counts for simple lodgings and boarding houses are not published.

Source: compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team from MHLW, Report on Public Health Administration and Services (FY2024 annual report)

By Prefecture — Most Facilities in Okinawa, Tokyo and Nagano; Most Rooms in Tokyo, Osaka and Hokkaido

By prefecture, the rankings for facilities and rooms do not match. The largest number of lodging facilities (sum of the three categories, our calculation) is in Okinawa with 7,612, followed by Tokyo 7,122, Nagano 7,022, Hokkaido 6,357 and Kyoto 4,657. By rooms in ryokan/hotel operations, however, the order is Tokyo 212,888, Osaka 128,519, Hokkaido 122,333, Aichi 68,339 and Shizuoka 68,174. Rooms per property are 78.1 in Osaka and 36.3 in Tokyo against 23.8 in Nagano — a clear contrast between hotel concentration in metropolitan areas and small-property concentration in resort areas.

The simple lodging share (= simple lodging operations ÷ lodging business total, our calculation) is highest in Kyoto at 78.3% (3,647 facilities), followed by Kagawa 70.9%, Nagasaki 69.0%, Kagoshima 65.6%, Nagano 62.1% and Yamanashi 61.0%. The content of simple lodgings differs by region — guesthouses and machiya inns in Kyoto City, small inns in the Setouchi area and on remote islands, mountain huts in the Alps — but the fact that more than 10 prefectures have simple lodgings as the majority of their facilities shows that measuring area supply by facility count alone can misread reality. How far prefectural rankings reshuffle depending on whether the denominator is ryokan/hotel operations only or includes simple lodgings is recounted in Lodging Supply Denominator: 44,901 Simple Lodgings Move Kyoto 21st→5th.

Figure 3: Licensed Lodging Facilities by Prefecture, Top 15 (End of FY2024, by Category)

Source: compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team from MHLW, Report on Public Health Administration and Services (FY2024 annual report)

The table below covers all 47 prefectures. Permits granted and closures are flows during the fiscal year (April 2024–March 2025), and the 3-year change is the change in facilities (sum of the three categories) since the end of FY2021.

Note: “Lodging total” = ryokan/hotel operations + simple lodging operations + boarding-house operations; “Rooms per property” = rooms ÷ ryokan/hotel facilities; “Simple lodging share” = simple lodging operations ÷ lodging total; “3-yr change” = lodging total at end of FY2024 − lodging total at end of FY2021 (all our calculations). Permits and closures are the in-year counts in the original tables.

Source: compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team from MHLW, Report on Public Health Administration and Services (FY2021 and FY2024 annual reports, e-Stat)

Three Statistics That “Don’t Add Up” — Permit-Based, Survey Population and Booking-Site Listings

There is more than one statistic for the “number” of places to stay. The 98,338 facilities in the Report on Public Health Administration and Services, the population of facilities used by the Japan Tourism Agency’s Overnight Travel Statistics Survey, and the number of properties we track from booking-site listings are all correct — but they count different things. Their definitions side by side look like this.

Source: compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team from MHLW, Report on Public Health Administration and Services; Japan Tourism Agency, Overnight Travel Statistics Survey (press releases for August 2026 first preliminary and July 2026 second preliminary); and MetroEngines Research

The differences come down to three reasons. The first is the population: the Report on Public Health Administration and Services asks “does it hold a permit?”, the Overnight Travel Statistics Survey asks “is it on the business register?”, and booking-site listings ask “is it selling now?” Facilities that hold a permit but are closed, seasonal mountain huts and members-only retreats are counted in the former but not the latter. The second is timing: fiscal year-end stock, a monthly survey and daily observation each capture a different moment. The third is classification: the Overnight Travel Statistics Survey uses facility types — ryokan, resort hotels, business hotels, city hotels, simple lodgings, and company and organization lodges — which do not match the permit categories under the Inns and Hotels Act. From January 2026 the Japan Tourism Agency revised the survey design, changing the stratification criterion from number of employees to number of rooms and surveying all facilities with 20 or more rooms, so care is also needed when reading year-on-year comparisons.

What Is Growing — Simple Lodgings and Small Properties Drive the Increase While Rooms per Property Stay Flat

The breakdown for the latest five fiscal years makes it clear that simple lodgings are what is growing. Between the end of FY2020 and the end of FY2024, the lodging business as a whole grew by 9,179 facilities, from 89,159 to 98,338. Of that, simple lodging operations rose by 7,054, from 37,847 to 44,901, accounting for 76.8% of the increase (= 7,054 ÷ 9,179, our calculation). Ryokan/hotel operations rose by 2,243, from 50,703 to 52,946, and boarding-house operations fell by 118.

In-year flows point the same way. In FY2024 there were 7,720 new permits and 2,817 closures in the lodging business, a net increase of 4,903 (this does not strictly match the 4,863-facility increase in year-end stock because of factors such as 26 permit revocations). By prefecture, the most permits were granted in Tokyo 1,589, Hokkaido 525, Okinawa 524, Nagano 452, Shizuoka 321 and Kyoto 291, with Tokyo alone accounting for 20.6% of national permits (= 1,589 ÷ 7,720, our calculation). Closures were highest in Nagano 244, Hokkaido 209, Wakayama 144 and Tokyo 113, suggesting entry and exit are happening simultaneously in resort areas. (For an analysis tracing the 7,720 permits and 2,817 closures by prefecture as net supply on a room basis, see 98,338 Lodging Facilities: 30 of 47 Prefectures Lost Rooms in FY2024.)

Looking at the three-year change in facilities by prefecture (end of FY2021 → end of FY2024), Tokyo stands out at +2,202 (+44.8%), followed by Okinawa +1,017, Hokkaido +546, Shizuoka +476, Chiba +459 and Yamanashi +452. Tokyo’s increase came from ryokan/hotel operations rising from 3,654 to 5,858 facilities, a much larger increase than in rooms (205,327 → 212,888, +7,561). Rooms per property fell from 56.2 to 36.3 on this calculation, indicating that small lodging facilities have been obtaining permits in Tokyo. Six prefectures declined — Fukushima −167, Aomori −89, Iwate −84, Tokushima −16, Niigata −9 and Aichi −3 — all by less than 10%.

Figure 4: 3-Year Change in Licensed Lodging Facilities (End of FY2021 → End of FY2024), Top 10 and Bottom 5

Note: Change in the sum of the three categories (our calculation).

Source: compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team from MHLW, Report on Public Health Administration and Services (FY2021 and FY2024 annual reports, e-Stat)

That national rooms per property rose by only one room, from 32.6 in FY2017 to 33.6 in FY2024, can be read in this context. The half-century trend toward larger properties has slowed since the late 2010s, and we have entered a phase in which ryokan/hotel operations with few rooms (including sizes that could not have obtained a permit under the old minimum room requirements) and simple lodgings are pushing up the property count. Rather than telling the decline of ryokan operations as a story of decay, the right way to use this statistic is to read it as structural change: the merger of categories, business-format conversion and the entry of small properties.

Implications for Operators and Investors — Permits Are Not Operating Supply

First, the facility and room counts in the Report on Public Health Administration and Services are a “permit-based stock,” not the supply actually selling as competition. Because they include facilities that are closed, operate seasonally, or are members-only or group-only and not sold to the public, measuring effective area supply requires looking at the number of properties and rooms whose sales can be observed on booking-site listings as well. Conversely, booking-site figures exclude ryokan, minshuku and simple lodgings that are not listed, so in prefectures with a high simple lodging share — Kyoto, Nagano, Yamanashi, Kagoshima and others — it pays to read them on the assumption that the gap to permit-based figures will be large. Which permit categories, prefectures and room-size bands account for the gap of roughly 70,000 between licensed facilities and booking-site listings is broken down in 98,338 Licensed Lodgings vs 27,248 on OTAs: Japan’s 71,090 Gap.

Second, the annual report is released late, around October of the following fiscal year, so it is not suited to tracking recent supply changes. To capture current openings and closures, it is practical to combine leading indicators — our opening data and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism’s Building Starts statistics and building dynamics statistics — and to treat the Report on Public Health Administration and Services as “a benchmark for checking the level of the whole population once a year.”

Third, prefectures where both permits and closures are high (Nagano, Hokkaido, Tokyo, Wakayama and others) are markets with active supply turnover. For existing properties, more new entrants arrive, but there are also opportunities to capture demand from properties that exit. For investors considering entry, areas where simple lodging permits are increasing but rooms in ryokan/hotel operations are not growing (more properties but roughly flat rooms) may signal a gap for mid-sized hotels. Reading facilities, rooms and the breakdown by category as a set of three is the shortest path to putting official statistics to work in investment decisions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Further Reading

• Overnight Travel Statistics Survey Guide: 61.6% OCC, Prelim vs Final
• Building Starts Survey Guide: 2,836 Lodging Starts in 2024, ¥591k/㎡
• Japan Lodging Net Supply by City 2026: 3,189 Openings vs 1,325 Exits
• Japan Q4 2026 Openings: 32 Hotels, 4,755 Rooms, Only 2,730 Truly New
• Japan Hotel Pipeline 2028: 106 Projects, 48% of 2027 So Far
• Simple Lodging ROI in Japan: 4–31 Year Payback at 29.6% OCC (2026)
• 98,338 Licensed Lodgings vs 27,248 on OTAs: Japan’s 71,090 Gap
• 98,338 Lodging Facilities: 30 of 47 Prefectures Lost Rooms in FY2024
• Lodging Supply Denominator: 44,901 Simple Lodgings Move Kyoto 21st→5th
• Japan Lodging Exits 2025: 267 Cases, New Openings Avg 23.7 Rooms