Replacing beds and mattresses is the smallest unit of investment in a guest-room renovation. When the HotelBank Editorial Team analyzed guest reviews, the top 100 hotels with the most reviews speaking favorably about bed and futon comfort or mattresses had a median mention rate of 7.2% of all reviews, and 76 of the 100 exceeded 5%. Yet hotels whose reviews praise sleep comfort are not clearly priced higher: their estimated settled ADR sits a median +19.6% above the area median for the same city/ward and the same hotel type, but there is almost no correlation between a higher mention rate and a larger price gap. This article measures the distribution and geography of these top 100 hotels, the differences in evaluation by review language, and the overlap with mentions of renovation and pillows. It then converts mattress replacement costs per room into yen per occupied room-night using the National Tax Agency’s useful-life tables and retail prices, and estimates what share of the per-room annual Capex disclosed by six J-REITs this represents. It is intended as input for October–December, when next year’s FF&E budgets are set, on an investment unit far smaller than a full renovation.

Mention Rate Distribution of the Top 100 — Median 7.2%, Higher at Smaller and Newer Hotels

Let us first look at the shape of the universe. Across the 8,100+ properties with at least 20 reviews and at least 10 favorable mentions of sleep comfort, the median mention rate is 4.8%, the top-25% threshold is 7.4% and the top-10% threshold is 11.3%. The top 100 by count have 24,919 favorable mentions out of 379,102 reviews, with a median mention rate of 7.22% and a range from 2.61% to 29.27%. 76 of the 100 exceed 5%, so most sit above the universe median, while 24 remain below 5%. This is because selecting by count brings in large airport and city-center properties with very large review bases: the nine hotels with more than 1,000 rooms each have 4,000 to 13,000+ reviews, and seven of them rank near the top by count even with mention rates in the 2–4% range.

Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (HotelBank Editorial Team research, NLP analysis)

Breaking this skew down by room count makes the pattern clear. Among the top 100, the 25 hotels with fewer than 200 rooms have a median mention rate of 12.0%, the 27 with 200–400 rooms 8.1%, the 34 with 400–800 rooms 5.8% and the 14 with 800+ rooms 4.3%: the smaller the hotel, the more sleep comfort gets talked about. By opening year, the 23 hotels opened in 2022 or later have a median of 9.3% and the 44 opened in 2018–2021 have 7.9%, versus 5.3% for the 13 opened in 2010–2017 and 6.0% for the 20 opened in 2009 or earlier. Newer hotels naturally have newer bedding, but the fact that 20 older hotels maintain mention rates of around 6% shows that bedding renewal is judged on a timeline separate from the building’s age.

By location, Tokyo (32), Osaka (17), Kyoto (16) and Chiba (15) account for 80%, followed by Ishikawa (6) and Hiroshima (6). By type, 50 are business hotels, 32 city hotels and 6 resorts. The top 100 have a median of 366 rooms and 49,261 rooms in total, about 4% of the roughly 1.27 million rooms at operating properties nationwide. The 15 Chiba hotels are around Narita Airport and Maihama, and Tokyo’s 32 include large properties at Haneda and Ariake, so the size of the review base has lifted some rankings.

Re-sorted by mention rate, the leaders are mainly small, newer properties. The table below shows the 15 hotels with the highest mention rates among the top 100; the line-up differs from the top by count. In all of them, sleep comfort sits at the center of how guests describe their stay. They range from 32 to 400 rooms and opened between 2013 and 2023.

Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (HotelBank Editorial Team research, NLP analysis, last 24 months; the top 100 by favorable mention count re-sorted by mention rate). Opening years are based on our data.

Note that hotels with many favorable mentions also receive negative ones. Counting all bedding mentions in the top 100 regardless of polarity gives 34,732, of which 8,305 (23.9%) were negative. By property, the median share of negative mentions is 17.4%, and it exceeds 10% at 83 hotels. Preferences for firmness and width differ from guest to guest, so the same bed is described as both “very comfortable” and “too hard.” Bedding is inherently a dimension on which opinions split, so when measuring the effect of a renewal investment, track not only a rise in the favorable mention rate but also a decline in negative mentions.

Mention Rate by Language — English Reviews 1.5–1.9x Japanese, Treating Bedding as an Evaluation Criterion

Next, we split the data by language to see who talks about bedding. For Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Chiba, where the top 100 are concentrated, the share of English reviews in the last 24 months that speak favorably of sleep comfort is 6.5% in Tokyo, 6.7% in Osaka, 8.7% in Kyoto and 6.1% in Chiba, 1.5–1.9 times the Japanese-language figures of 4.3%, 4.0%, 4.5% and 3.8%. Looking at where sleep comfort ranks among topics in English reviews, it is 8th in Tokyo and Osaka, 10th in Kyoto and 15th in Chiba, clearly higher than its 17th–27th place in Japanese reviews. Traditional and Simplified Chinese exceed Japanese in Kyoto at 6.0–6.4% but are on par with Japanese in Tokyo and Osaka, while Korean is the lowest at 3.0–4.1% in all four prefectures.

Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (HotelBank Editorial Team research, NLP analysis). Reviews: Tokyo — Japanese 634,749, English 355,308, Traditional Chinese 40,958, Simplified Chinese 9,860, Korean 39,618; Osaka — 416,737, 133,868, 25,414, 7,002, 39,890; Kyoto — 261,544, 159,606, 14,545, 5,482, 13,164; Chiba — 232,456, 33,947, 4,018, 982, 3,288

This gap is reflected in the make-up of the top 100. English accounts for a median 35.4% of the 100 hotels’ reviews, and at 63 hotels Japanese makes up less than half. The 45 hotels with an English share of 40% or more have a median bedding mention rate (regardless of polarity) of 10.3%, versus 7.7% for the 22 hotels below 20%. The pattern that bedding is discussed more in locations with many international visitors reads less as international guests being fussy about beds and more as a reflection of English-language review culture, where “bed comfort” is a standard evaluation item. For hotels with a high share of international guests, bedding, alongside cleanliness, is an asset with high visibility in reviews, and the same structure found in our earlier article “Room Cleanliness: Foreign Reviews Mention It 1.5x More” is confirmed here as well.

Overlap with Renovation and Pillow Mentions — Where Renovation Is Discussed, So Is Sleep Comfort

Does the evaluation of sleep comfort move together with renovation? Among the 8,100+ property universe, we took the 4,406 properties with at least 10 favorable mentions of renovation or newness and compared sleep-comfort mention rates by quartile of renovation mention rate. The median rises step by step: 4.0% in the lowest quartile (renovation mention rate below 1.9%), 4.2% in the next, 4.6% in the one after and 5.2% in the highest quartile (5.5% or more). The 367 properties with a renovation mention rate of 10% or more have a median sleep-comfort mention rate of 5.1%, versus 4.0% for the 2,063 properties below 3%. Where renovation is discussed, the bedding is often new as well, and the two coexist. However, the top 100 have a median renovation mention rate of only 1.8%, and only nine exceed 5%. At most hotels where sleep comfort is strongly praised, it is the bedding itself being evaluated, not a full renovation.

Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (HotelBank Editorial Team research, NLP analysis)

We looked at pillows the same way. Only 440 properties nationwide have at least 10 favorable mentions of pillow quality or pillow choice, but the 427 of them that are also in the sleep-comfort universe have a median sleep-comfort mention rate of 5.1%, above the 4.8% of the other 7,730 properties. 43 of the top 100 belong to this pillow group. Pillows cost an order of magnitude less than mattresses, and operational measures such as a pillow menu make a difference, so when planning a bedding renewal it is efficient to pair it with a pillow refresh so that the two are talked about together.

Cost and Cycle of Bed Renewal — 8 Years for Tax, 3 Years for Bedding, ¥20,000–¥150,000 Retail per Mattress

As a basis for investment decisions, we lay out the figures that can be confirmed from primary sources. The National Tax Agency’s “Useful Life Table for Major Depreciable Assets” sets, under tools, furniture and fixtures, 8 years for beds; 3 years for textile products such as curtains, floor cushions, bedding and padded robes; 5 years for reception sets and other furniture used in hospitality businesses; and 3 years for carpets and other floor coverings used in hospitality businesses. Hotel bed frames fall under 8 years, while mattresses may be treated either as beds (8 years) or bedding (3 years) depending on construction; accounting depreciation and physical lifespan are, however, different things. Bedding maker Nishikawa’s guideline for household use is about 10 years for coil mattresses and 7–8 years for urethane, and commercial use involves heavier utilization.

Sources: National Tax Agency “Useful Life Table for Major Depreciable Assets”; press report citing Nishikawa’s guideline; listed prices at retailers and a comparison site; HVS. Manufacturers do not publish contract (corporate) prices for hotels, so this article uses retail prices as upper and lower reference points.

Manufacturers do not publish corporate prices for hotels. Commercial beds sold at mass retailers under a “hotel spec” label are also priced on a quotation basis, as are the hotel lines of major domestic brands. This article therefore takes the range from about ¥20,000 for mass-retail household products to about ¥150,000 for major brands’ entry lines as the reference range, and sets three levels of ¥30,000, ¥60,000 and ¥120,000 per mattress as “our assumptions.” Bed frames are often used longer than mattresses within the 8-year statutory life, and partial renewal that keeps the frame and replaces only the mattress is common in practice. As Koala’s promotion of its hotel-specific model as “designed to resist sagging over a long period, keeping replacement costs down” shows, bedding makers are also pitching durability to corporate buyers. Beds and bedding are also depreciable assets taxed separately from the building; how the tax bill moves in the year after a bulk renewal of guest-room FF&E is modeled in three scenarios in Hotel Depreciable Asset Tax: ¥21k–¥66k per Room a Year.

Sensitivity Table for 100- and 200-Room Models — Mattress Replacement at ¥13–89 per Room-Night, 1–42% of Annual Capex

Using these assumptions, we estimate the burden for 100-room and 200-room hotels replacing all their mattresses at once. The premises are 1.3 beds per room (our assumption for a mix of single-focused limited-service rooms and twins), 80% occupancy (year-round, our assumption) and renewal cycles of 6, 8 and 10 years. The annual burden per room is mattress price × 1.3 ÷ cycle, converted to yen per occupied room-night by dividing by annual rooms sold (365 days × 80%).

Source: HotelBank Editorial Team estimates. 1.3 mattresses per room and 80% occupancy (year-round) are our assumptions. Delivery and disposal costs, frame replacement and linens are not included.

Source: HotelBank Editorial Team estimates (based on our assumptions)

Set against capital expenditure disclosed in the IR materials of six listed hotel REITs, which over the latest 12 months ran from ¥62,000 to ¥636,000 per room per year, the middle case (¥60,000, 8 years) of ¥9,800 per room-year equals 15.7% of the lowest figure (¥62,000) and 1.5% of the highest (¥636,000). Even the heaviest case (¥120,000, 6 years) is ¥26,000 per room-year: 41.9% for a property spending ¥62,000 a year and 4.1% for one spending ¥636,000. In other words, a full mattress replacement is only a few percent of Capex in a period of major renovation, but for properties with young buildings and small annual Capex it is a decision worth 20–40% of a single year’s FF&E budget.

It is also worth checking the effect on rates. The required uplift is ¥33 per room-night in the middle case and ¥89 even in the heaviest case. The estimated settled ADR (12-month average) of the top 100 ranges from about ¥7,000 to about ¥50,000, and against any of these the burden falls within 0.1–1.3%. Compared with the overall equipment renewal burden shown in our earlier article “214k Hotel Rooms Aged 25–35 Face Equipment Renewal at ¥50–250/Night,” bedding is among the lightest items. Moreover, because a room can be returned to inventory the same day a mattress is replaced, there is almost none of the revenue lost during closure that comes with a full renovation (see our earlier article “Hotel Renovation Downtime Costs 32.6% of Capex“). The small investment and the absence of closure are why bedding renewal should be the first use of the FF&E reserve to consider.

Measured Price Gap Within the Same City/Ward — Median +19.6%, but Uncorrelated with Mention Rate

So do hotels whose sleep comfort is praised actually sell at higher rates? Among the top 100, we measured the gap for the 86 properties in the three hotel types whose estimated settled ADR adjustment factors have been validated (business, city and resort) and that could be matched against the area median for the same city/ward and type over 12 months (October 2025–September 2026). The median was +19.6%, with an interquartile range of −4.1% to +59.1%, and 58 of the 86 were above the area median. By type, the 48 business hotels had a median of +38.2% (37 above), the 32 city hotels +6.3% (17 above) and the 6 resorts +10.9% (4 above). By prefecture, Tokyo was +23.4% (28 properties), Osaka +21.6% (15) and Chiba +17.0% (13), while Kyoto was −3.2% (12): in Kyoto, hotels praised for sleep comfort are not necessarily in the high-price band.

Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (estimated settled ADR; area medians cover 2–160 properties per city/ward × type)

However, this +19.6% cannot be read as the effect of bedding. First, among the 86 properties the correlation coefficient between mention rate and price gap is a weak 0.11: the 14 properties with a mention rate of 10% or more have a median price gap of +16.5% and the 22 below 5% have +14.2%, so the gap barely changes with the mention rate. Second, the price gap simply mirrors differences in grade. Medians by grade are +31.9% for upper midscale (16 properties), +22.4% for midscale (25) and +16.5% for luxury (26), versus −7.0% for economy (5) and −3.1% for budget (3): properties positioned at higher grades within the same “business hotel” category are merely above that ward’s business hotel median. Sleep-comfort praise and high rates coexist among the top 100, but this data does not show that bedding renewal pushed rates up.

What is useful for investment decisions is rather the reverse reading. The eight economy and budget properties sit, at the median, in a price band below the area median, yet they made the top 100 for favorable sleep-comfort mentions. What this measurement shows is that bedding investment pays back as review recognition even at low-priced properties, and that the investment costs only tens of yen per room-night. Not as a way to raise rates but as a way to create differentiation from competitors in reviews in the low-price band, bedding renewal offers a cost-effectiveness outlook that is easy to estimate. A similar case of a small investment unit turning into review visibility is confirmed from mentions at 122 hotels nationwide in In-House Coffee in Guest Reviews — 122 Japan Hotels.

Choosing Between Bedding Renewal and Full Renovation — Partial FF&E Renewal First, Building Systems at Age Milestones

Finally, we summarize how to choose between bedding renewal and a full renovation. Among this article’s top 100, only nine properties have a renovation mention rate above 5%, and sleep comfort was discussed independently of renovation. In the universe as a whole, on the other hand, properties where renovation is discussed also see more discussion of sleep comfort. Taken together, bedding renewal leads to review recognition whether done as part of a full renovation or on its own, but done on its own it involves no closure and the investment stays at around ¥10,000–¥20,000 per room per year.

Source: compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team. Full-renovation figures are from our earlier article “Hotel Renovation Downtime Costs 32.6% of Capex.”

For limited-service and city hotels aged 10–20 years, bedding has likely already gone through one 8-year statutory life, and it is one of the few items that can be addressed within the FF&E reserve before ages 25–35, when building fixture renewals pile up. As shown in our earlier article “Hotels at Year 10: The Renovation Gap Is +13.6% Below 100 Rooms,” the effect of renovation tends to show up around year 10. So before committing to a full renovation, first renew bedding and pillows, then observe over 12-month periods how the sleep-comfort mention rate, including English reviews, and the share of negative mentions move. If the mention rate rises above 7.4%, the top-25% threshold of the universe, that also becomes input for decisions on investing in layouts and bathrooms in the next full renovation. For operators, deciding the uses of the FF&E reserve “starting with bedding” is a rational starting point in terms of both investment efficiency and review visibility.

Summary

The top 100 hotels with the most reviews praising sleep comfort have a median mention rate of 7.2%, with 76 above 5%, and smaller and newer properties have higher mention rates. The mention rate in English reviews is 1.5–1.9 times that in Japanese, and the higher a hotel’s share of international guests, the more its bedding is discussed. Mentions of renovation and pillows coexist with mentions of sleep comfort, but at most of the top 100 it is the bedding itself, not a full renovation, that is being praised. Under our assumptions, a full mattress replacement costs ¥13–89 per room-night, equal to 1–42% of the ¥62,000–¥636,000 per room annual Capex of six REITs, and requires no closure. The price gap versus the same city/ward and type is a median +19.6%, but it is uncorrelated with the mention rate and reflects grade differences. The reading supported by this article’s measurements is to position bedding renewal not as an investment that buys higher rates, but as one that builds review recognition at a small cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Are hotels with high sleep-comfort mention rates also priced higher?
Comparing 86 of the top 100 with the area median for the same city/ward and type, the median gap was +19.6%. However, the correlation between mention rate and price gap is a weak 0.11, and the gap reflects differences in grade. This data does not show that bedding renewal pushed rates up.

Q. How much should we budget for mattress replacement?
Corporate prices for hotels are not published, so this article assumed ¥30,000, ¥60,000 and ¥120,000 per mattress with reference to retail prices. At 1.3 mattresses per room, 80% occupancy (year-round) and an 8-year cycle, that is ¥4,900–¥19,500 per room per year, or ¥17–67 per room-night. Delivery and disposal costs and frame replacement are not included.

Q. What is the useful life for tax purposes?
Under the National Tax Agency’s useful-life table, beds are 8 years and textile products such as bedding and curtains are 3 years. Which category a mattress falls under depends on its construction and tax judgment, so please consult a tax accountant.

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