The Travel and Tourism Consumption Survey (旅行・観光消費動向調査) is a sample-based statistic in which the Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) sends questionnaires each quarter to residents of Japan and estimates the number of, and spending on, domestic overnight trips, domestic day trips and overseas trips. Alongside the Inbound Consumption Survey, which measures visitors to Japan, and the Overnight Travel Statistics Survey, which measures accommodation facilities’ results, it is the one of the JTA’s three statistics that covers “domestic demand from Japanese travelers.” The latest figures, the second preliminary release for Q2 2026 (April-June) published on October 30, 2026, put domestic travel spending by Japanese at ¥7.4695 trillion (+10.7% YoY), of which overnight trips accounted for ¥5.9066 trillion (+12.7% YoY).

What Is the Travel and Tourism Consumption Survey? A Quarterly Demand-Side Statistic Based on Residents’ Answers

JTA materials describe this survey as a “demand-side statistic covering Japanese people.” Its purpose is to capture the number of trips taken and the spending of residents of Japan. The survey began in fiscal 2003, and results have been published in the current tabulation format since 2010. Unlike the Overnight Travel Statistics Survey, which hotels and ryokan answer, the respondents here are the travelers themselves. It can therefore capture money spent outside the facility, such as transport and souvenirs, but it cannot show facility-side pricing, such as what rate a room sold for.

Sampling uses stratified two-stage sampling. First, 340 locations nationwide are selected by allocating in proportion to population across 141 strata formed from prefecture (47 categories) × municipality size (3 categories). Then 85 residents are systematically sampled from each location’s Basic Resident Register. At 340 × 85, about 29,000 people receive the questionnaire, which is mailed to the same respondents four times a year (online responses are also accepted). For Q2 2026, 28,900 questionnaires were sent and 10,430 returned, a response rate of 36.1%.

Another point to grasp is what each statistic is actually good for. The JTA’s three statistics differ in whom they measure and in what units, so even figures labeled “lodging” cannot be substituted for one another. Side by side, they look like this.

Reading Q2 2026: ¥7.4695 Trillion Is a Record, but Traveler Growth Is Small

In the second preliminary release, the JTA describes domestic travel spending as “a record high for an April-June quarter” and total travelers as “the highest for an April-June quarter since the COVID-19 pandemic.” Breaking down the +10.7% in spending, however, total travelers rose +2.3% and spending per trip +8.2%, so most of the increase comes from spending per trip. Overnight trips are relatively balanced, with travelers +5.5% and spending per trip +6.8%, while day trips saw travelers turn negative at −0.9%, with spending per trip of +5.0% supporting a +4.0% rise in spending.

Overlaying each year’s line is the quickest way to see the seasonal peak. In all three years, Q3 is the largest quarter and Q1 the smallest, and both quarters of 2026 so far sit above the previous year’s line.

Source: Compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team from JTA “Travel and Tourism Consumption Survey, Q2 2026 (second preliminary).” 2024-2025 are final figures; 2026 is second preliminary

Preliminary vs Final: Figures Move from First to Second Preliminary, Then Barely Change at Final

The figure first seen in news reports is the first preliminary, and it is not final. For Q2 2025, the first preliminary was ¥6.7988 trillion (+6.2% YoY), while both the second preliminary at the end of October and the final figure at the end of April the following year came in at ¥6.7453 trillion (+5.3% YoY). The revision was −¥53.5 billion, or −0.79%, with the change almost entirely occurring between the first and second preliminary. Q1 2025 followed the same pattern: the first preliminary of ¥5.6483 trillion became ¥5.6419 trillion at the second preliminary, and the final figure was the same amount.

Source: Compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team from JTA “Travel and Tourism Consumption Survey” releases for each quarter (first preliminary, second preliminary, final). Q2 2026 is as of the second preliminary; the others are differences against final figures

Across the four quarters we could verify, revisions went both up and down, with absolute values between 0.1% and 0.9%. The sample is too small to call this a typical revision range, but it is wise to avoid drawing firm conclusions about small YoY changes from the first preliminary alone. The day-trip traveler figure for Q2 2026, where +0.1% became −0.9%, illustrates why. The press release materials reviewed for this article do not give a breakdown of what drove the revisions.

The timing of final figures also deserves attention. Quarterly final figures are not released on their own; they are finalized together with the calendar-year final release. According to the release schedule, the final figure for Q1 2026 will come on April 30, 2027, and until then the second preliminary is effectively the reference value. Detailed tables by expense item and accommodation type also become available only from the second preliminary, since first preliminary press materials are limited to three indicators: spending, travelers and spending per trip. Lodging-industry analysis that uses expense items therefore has to wait for the second preliminary.

Use for Hoteliers (1): How Much of the ¥76,940 Is Accommodation?

The ¥76,940 per person per overnight trip (Q2 2026 second preliminary) is not the amount spent on accommodation. It is total trip spending, including transport, food and drink, and shopping. According to Table 11 of the statistical tables, accommodation accounts for ¥18,965 of this, or 24.6%. The purchase rate of only 59.5% is most naturally read as reflecting that trips staying at a family home or with relatives or friends are included in the base, and spending per purchaser, limited to those who paid for accommodation, is ¥31,886.

Source: Compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team from JTA “Travel and Tourism Consumption Survey” statistical tables, Table 12 (Q2 2025 final, Q2 2026 second preliminary). Composition ratios calculated for this article

Comparing the expense mix with a year earlier, accommodation rose 2.6pt from 22.1% to 24.6%, while package and group tour fees fell 2.0pt from 9.4% to 7.5%. Tour fees include accommodation, food and drink, and transport, and are not broken down. In other words, part of the rise in independently arranged accommodation may be explained by a shift from packages to independent booking. Combining the two gives 31.5% rising to 32.1%, a milder increase. When comparing against your own property’s sales channel mix, it is worth watching the combined figure as well as accommodation alone.

The same applies in yen terms. Total accommodation spending was ¥1.4559 trillion, up +25.8% from ¥1.1571 trillion a year earlier, but it is premature to read this growth, about twice the +12.7% of overnight travel spending overall, directly as strength in demand or rates. Quarterly values by expense item are prone to sampling fluctuation, so for gauging the trend it is more reliable to use the 2025 annual values as a yardstick: accommodation at 25.1% and tour fees at 7.0%.

Use for Hoteliers (2): Cross-Checking Against the Overnight Travel Statistics Survey

Placing demand-side nights next to facility-side guest counts shows what this statistic does and does not cover. The survey’s total nights for Q2 2026 were 154.92 million, but 30.0% of those, or 46.54 million nights, were spent at a family home or with relatives or friends. Using all nights as a yardstick for the hotel and ryokan market would overstate this portion. Narrowing to five categories (hotels, ryokan, pensions and the like, recreational lodges and the like, and membership facilities) brings the figure down to 103.89 million nights, close in scale to the Overnight Travel Statistics Survey’s 107.12 million total guest nights by Japanese.

Even so, the YoY directions do not match. The consumption survey’s five facility-type categories are +3.0%, while total guest nights by Japanese in the Overnight Travel Statistics Survey are −4.1%. Differences in survey design likely play a role here. The Overnight Travel Statistics Survey changed its stratification basis from number of employees to number of guest rooms starting with January 2026 data, and the JTA itself notes that YoY comparisons may include the effect of this revision. The consumption survey, for its part, is a sample survey with about 10,000 responses, and nights by category fluctuate. The two statistics can be placed side by side to check a sense of scale, but one cannot be used to explain changes in the other, nor can they be spliced together as a single series.

In practice, the realistic approach is to give each a separate role: use the Overnight Travel Statistics Survey for area guest numbers and room occupancy, and this survey for Japanese travelers’ trip purposes and spending by expense item. For guest-number trends during 2026, see also our article summarizing January-August total guest nights.

Use for Hoteliers (3): The Gap Between Accommodation Spending per Person per Night and ADR

Using the values by accommodation type in the statistical tables, this article calculates a rough “accommodation spending per person per night” by dividing accommodation spending by total nights. For 2025 as a whole, this comes to about ¥12,600 for hotels and about ¥17,500 for ryokan; for Q2 2026 (second preliminary), about ¥13,700 for hotels and about ¥22,500 for ryokan. The quarterly values jumped sharply from a year earlier (about ¥10,500 for hotels, about ¥17,500 for ryokan), which again calls for caution with differences in a single quarter.

How far is this level from facilities’ room rates? This site has no single nationwide estimated settled ADR, so as a reference we line up the 47 prefectural medians and take their median, which gives roughly ¥8,400-¥9,800 for April-June 2026. Area gaps are also wide: Tokyo at ¥12,100-¥17,800 and Kyoto at ¥11,400-¥21,700.

On the numbers alone, per-room ADR falls below per-person, per-night accommodation spending, which looks inconsistent at first glance. But rather than one figure being wrong, the reasonable interpretation is that they measure different things. The units differ: per person versus per room. The statistic’s accommodation spending is what respondents paid, while ADR is a tax-excluded equivalent estimate. The statistic is weighted by the actual spending of Japanese who stayed, so areas with many stays are strongly reflected, whereas the median of 47 prefectures gives a rural prefecture and Tokyo one vote each. In addition, the statistic excludes foreign visitors, while ADR also reflects rates at properties where many foreign visitors stay.

It follows that this statistic’s accommodation spending cannot tell you whether your own ADR is high or low. At most, it can be used to check which way Japanese guests’ accommodation spending is moving, comparing annual values with annual values, and to compare that direction with your own rate trend. The equivalent issue on the inbound side is covered in the gap between Q2’s ¥2.5 trillion and actual ADR.

Reading by Regional Block: As Far as Quarterly Data Goes

The smallest regional unit in the quarterly tables is the 10 blocks from Hokkaido to Okinawa. Looking at overnight travel spending by main destination, Q2 2026 was led by Kanto at ¥1.6295 trillion, followed by Kinki at ¥714.3 billion and Kyushu at ¥636.8 billion. Kinki’s −20.9% should be read with the fact that the comparison quarter, Q2 2025, coincided with the opening of Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai. The large gains in Hokuriku-Shinetsu and Tohoku are also safest treated as values that include quarterly sampling fluctuation.

Tourism Spending Ranking by Prefecture: Found in the Calendar-Year “Reference Tables”

This survey’s quarterly values do not answer the question “what is tourism spending by prefecture?”, but prefecture-level reference tables are published with the calendar-year final release. They estimate spending and visitor numbers by destination. In the 2025 edition for Japanese travelers (all purposes), Osaka at ¥1.5034 trillion and Tokyo at ¥1.5030 trillion are nearly level, followed by Hokkaido at ¥1.3914 trillion and Chiba at ¥1.2372 trillion. Okinawa stands out in spending per person at ¥89,900, ranking fifth nationwide in travel spending despite having 10.93 million visitors.

There are three cautions when reading these figures. First, they cover Japanese travelers only and exclude spending by foreign visitors. Second, inter-prefectural transport of ¥3.6309 trillion is listed separately and pre- and post-trip spending is not allocated, so the 47-prefecture total of ¥19.5502 trillion does not match the national ¥26.7845 trillion. Third, sample sizes vary by prefecture, such as 461 for Okinawa and 189 for Tottori, and the JTA itself treats these as “reference tables.” Small changes in rank are best not given much meaning.

To check figures that prefectures survey themselves, another entry point is the “Tourist Arrivals Statistics Based on Common Standards.” This framework has prefectures track tourist arrivals and spending on the same standards, with results posted on each prefecture’s website. The JTA’s own compilation runs through the March 2024 release, with 46 prefectures having adopted it and Osaka not. To line up all 47 prefectures at the same point in time, this survey’s reference tables are easier to use.

Three Common Misreadings

Confusing “¥37.6 trillion in domestic travel spending” with “¥26.8 trillion.” The ¥37.6 trillion for 2025 is “travel spending within Japan,” combining domestic overnight trips by Japanese (¥21.7 trillion), domestic day trips by Japanese (¥5.1 trillion), overseas trips by Japanese (domestic portion, ¥1.4 trillion) and inbound travel (¥9.5 trillion). This survey’s headline domestic travel spending by Japanese is ¥26.7845 trillion (¥26.8 trillion), excluding inbound visitors and the domestic portion of overseas trips. Mistaking whether a figure includes inbound visitors when discussing lodging demand would put the market size off by roughly 40%.

Comparing preliminary figures with final figures. The +10.7% YoY for Q2 2026 is the second preliminary of ¥7.4695 trillion divided by the Q2 2025 final figure of ¥6.7453 trillion. Using the previous year’s first preliminary of ¥6.7988 trillion as the denominator gives +9.9%, which differs from the published value. When comparing, it is safest to quote the YoY figure given in the published materials as is.

Annualizing a quarterly figure. This statistic has large seasonal differences. Multiplying the 2025 quarters by four gives ¥22.5676 trillion for Q1, ¥26.9812 trillion for Q2, ¥32.3408 trillion for Q3 and ¥25.2484 trillion for Q4. Only Q2 comes close to the actual annual figure, and that is mere coincidence: each quarter’s share of the year spreads across 21.1%, 25.2%, 30.2% and 23.6%.

Frequently Asked Questions

Summary: Use the Second Preliminary as the Baseline and Read Expense Items Annually

The Travel and Tourism Consumption Survey shows each quarter how many nights Japanese spend on domestic trips and how much goes to which expense items. Q2 2026 came to ¥7.4695 trillion at the second preliminary, with spending per trip rather than traveler numbers the main driver of the increase. For the lodging industry, three points matter: rather than jumping on headline spending, look at accommodation and tour fees by expense item together; separate facility-type nights from stays with relatives and friends; and check quarterly fluctuations against annual values. The next update is the Q3 first preliminary on November 18, which will be the first check on summer demand, but for a reliable reading it is better to wait for the second preliminary at the end of January next year.

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