We used NLP to analyze guest reviews from the past 24 months and counted, hotel by hotel, two kinds of mentions: English support (“the staff helped us in English”) and multilingual support (“the staff could assist in several languages, such as Chinese and Korean”). Taking the top 100 properties by mention count from among those with at least 100 reviews, the English-support top 100 cluster in urban markets — Tokyo 43, Kyoto 16, Osaka 13 — while the multilingual top 100 lean toward markets with a high share of Korean- and Chinese-language reviews — Osaka 36, Fukuoka 16, Okinawa 14. This article confirms the difference between the two distributions using the language mix of reviews, checks the type of properties at the top by room count, and then — against the backdrop of foreign employment in the accommodation industry (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, “Employment Status of Foreign Workers”) and the intake ceiling for the Specified Skilled Worker “Accommodation” category — considers when to staff multilingual employees and how to divide roles between people and translation tools.

English Support in Tokyo and Kyoto, Multilingual Support in Osaka, Fukuoka and Okinawa — Prefecture Distribution of the Top 100

We begin by laying out the two types of mention by prefecture. Taking the top 100 by number of English-support mentions, Tokyo accounts for 43 — four in ten — followed by Kyoto with 16 and Osaka with 13. These three prefectures together reach 72, with the rest scattered across Gifu (4), Hokkaido (4), Chiba (3), Fukuoka (3) and others. All three Chiba properties are hotels near Narita Airport, and the four in Gifu are inns in old post towns and mountain destinations such as Magome and Takayama, which draw many independent travelers from Europe, North America and Australia.

The multilingual top 100, on the other hand, has a clearly different makeup. Osaka has the most with 36, followed by Fukuoka (16), Okinawa (14) and Hokkaido (10), while Tokyo has only 7 and Kyoto 4. Tokyo and Kyoto, which made up nearly 60% of the English-support top 100, have just 11 between them in the multilingual list — a contrast that can be read as a direct reflection of the different language mix of travelers visiting each market.

Source: HotelBank Editorial Team research (NLP analysis of guest reviews, most recent 24 months, N = top 100 each for English support and multilingual support)

Mention rates also differ in level. The median mention rate among the English-support top 100 is 2.55%, with 16 properties at 5% or above. For multilingual support, the median is 1.57%, with 12 at 5% or above. English support is a broad but thin topic — “2 to 3 out of every 100 reviews” mention it — while multilingual support comes up less often, which makes it stand out as a strong characteristic at the properties where mentions concentrate. Hotel Wan Osaka Ebisu (Osaka, 40 rooms) had 114 multilingual-support mentions for a rate of 9.68%, and WPU Shinjuku (Tokyo, 104 rooms) had 177 English-support mentions for 8.21%; at both, nearly one in ten reviews noted that “we could communicate.”

What the Language Mix of Reviews Says About Each Market — 30% English in Tokyo and Kyoto, 14% Korean in Fukuoka

The difference in distribution is borne out by the languages in which each prefecture’s reviews are written. We tallied the past 24 months of reviews in nine languages — Japanese, English, Korean, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Thai, French, German and Spanish — and calculated each language’s share of the total. In Tokyo, English accounts for 30.6% and in Kyoto 32.2%: three in ten reviews are written in English. By contrast, Osaka has 20.2% English and 6.2% Korean; in Fukuoka, Korean at 13.8% exceeds English at 8.3%; and in Okinawa, Chinese (8.8%), English (7.6%) and Korean (6.0%) are roughly level.

Source: HotelBank Editorial Team research (NLP analysis of guest reviews, most recent 24 months)

Source: HotelBank Editorial Team research (most recent 24 months; share of total reviews in nine languages; language is the language of posting, not nationality)

The combined share of Korean and Chinese is clearly higher in the three prefectures with many multilingual top-100 properties — Osaka 11.1%, Okinawa 14.9%, Fukuoka 20.8% — than in Tokyo (7.9%) or Kyoto (6.7%). In other words, the reviews confirm a natural correspondence: “they speak English” becomes a talking point in markets with a high share of English speakers, and “they also speak Chinese and Korean” in cities oriented toward nearby Asian markets. Additionally, French, German and Spanish combined make up 6.5% in Kyoto and 4.7% in Tokyo — several times the 1.3% in Okinawa and the under-1% in Fukuoka and Hokkaido — showing that in Kyoto there is also demand-side attention to European languages other than English. The differences in what reviews praise by language of posting are analyzed in detail in our tag analysis of reviews in eight languages.

Note, however, that this language mix reflects “how many people write reviews in which language,” not the nationality mix of guests itself. Travelers who post in English include visitors from Southeast Asia and India, and some foreign residents of Japan post in Japanese. Actual stays by nationality need to be read alongside primary statistics such as the Japan Tourism Agency’s Overnight Travel Statistics Survey and our analysis of where Korean visitors stay.

The Types of Properties at the Top — Median of 169 Rooms, 30% with 100 Rooms or Fewer

Next, we check what kinds of properties rank at the top, using room count. The median room count is 169 for the English-support top 100 and 166 for multilingual support; neither list is centered on large city hotels. Properties with 100 rooms or fewer account for 30 in the English-support list and 35 in the multilingual list, while those with 301 rooms or more number only 27 and 19 respectively. By category, the English-support list includes 48 business hotels and 21 city hotels, plus 12 hostels, 2 machiya (traditional townhouses), 2 guesthouses and 3 ryokan; the multilingual list comprises 62 business hotels, 7 resort hotels, 7 ryokan, 5 hostels and 2 vacation rentals. (Categories follow our master data classification; apartment-style hotels are included under hostels or business hotels.)

Source: HotelBank Editorial Team research (NLP analysis of guest reviews, most recent 24 months, N = top 100 each for English support and multilingual support)

Looking at the properties at the top of the English-support list shows how wide the range of types is. There are apartment-style properties with kitchens such as WPU Shinjuku (104 rooms), MIMARU Tokyo Kinshicho (82 rooms) and MIMARU Tokyo Shinjuku West (76 rooms); machiya such as Kyomachiya Ryokan Sakura Urushitei (32 rooms); and mid-sized Kyoto hotels such as KABIN TAKA (85 rooms), KABIN Kyoto (75 rooms) and TUNE STAY KYOTO (140 rooms). At the same time, the list also includes airport hotels — Mercure Tokyo Haneda Airport (363 rooms), Narita Tobu Hotel Airport (484 rooms) and Hotel Nikko Narita (685 rooms) — and large city hotels such as Keio Plaza Hotel (1,438 rooms) and Hotel Metropolitan (800 rooms). Airport hotels serve many guests with connecting or early-morning flights, so being understood at check-in and check-out tends to be recorded in reviews. Large hotels have high mention counts, but because they have 5,000–10,000 reviews, their mention rates stay in the 1–2% range — a different character from the 4–8% of smaller properties.

Source: HotelBank Editorial Team research (NLP analysis of guest reviews, most recent 24 months)

The multilingual top 15 lean further toward Osaka, Kyushu and Okinawa, and the properties are smaller. Small properties such as Hotel Wan Osaka Ebisu (40 rooms), Plum Hotel (54 rooms), Hotel 88 Shinsaibashi (51 rooms), Megu Fuji2021 (31 rooms) and TokyoNEST Nippori (22 rooms) rank high, with Okinawa Hinode Hotel (201 rooms), Osaka Hinode Hotel (354 rooms), The Bridge Hotel Shinsaibashi (195 rooms) and Hotel Torifito Naha Asahibashi (136 rooms) filling in between. Checking the original reviews, Okinawa Hinode Hotel has comments in both English and Chinese such as “the front desk staff spoke excellent English…” and “there was Chinese-speaking staff at the front desk…” (posted August 2025 and April 2026), and at Hotel Wan Osaka Ebisu several posts from September 2025 to May 2026 mention late-night reception staff assisting in Chinese. WPU Shinjuku also has a Japanese-language review saying “there are multilingual staff, so both foreign and Japanese guests can stay with peace of mind” (posted November 2024).

Source: HotelBank Editorial Team research (NLP analysis of guest reviews, most recent 24 months)

Read Mention Counts and Mention Rates Separately — A Note on Properties with Few Reviews

We ranked by mention count because sorting by mention rate alone lets properties with few reviews monopolize the top. Indeed, the highest mention rates are 28.99% for British Hills (Fukushima, 107 rooms) in English support and 21.0% for Momiji no Yado Beppu (Oita, a single vacation-rental house) in multilingual support, but they have only 207 and 219 reviews respectively, so a few reviews either way moves the rate by several points. British Hills is an unusual business — a training and lodging facility that recreates an English townscape, where English is the common language on site — so it is only natural that English support comes up. The multilingual top 100 includes 7 properties with fewer than 300 reviews, which are flagged in the table.

Conversely, it would be a mistake to read a large hotel with many mentions but a low mention rate as “hard to communicate with.” Narita Tobu Hotel Airport ranks 4th overall with 103 English-support mentions, but because it has more than 10,000 reviews its mention rate is only 1.00%. Guests write “they helped us in English” when the experience exceeded their expectations; at an international airport hotel, being able to use English is within expectations and is less likely to be written about. Please read mention rate as an indicator of “how likely the topic is to come up,” not as an indicator of language capability.

Background — 47,000 Foreign Workers in Accommodation, a 23,000 Intake Ceiling for Specified Skilled Worker “Accommodation”

Behind the growing number of reviews saying “we could communicate” is a change in the makeup of the workforce on the hotel floor. According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s “Employment Status of Foreign Workers” notification data (as of the end of October 2025), published on January 30, 2026, foreign workers across all industries numbered 2,571,037 (up 268,450, or 11.7%, year on year), a new record since notification became mandatory. By industry, “Accommodations, eating and drinking services” accounted for 319,999 people, or 12.4% of the total, with year-on-year growth of 17.1% — among the highest of the major industries. That is about 1.6 times the figure five years earlier at the end of October 2021 (203,492).

Source: Compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, “Employment Status of Foreign Workers” notifications (as of the end of October each year)

Limiting this to “Accommodations” alone, there are 47,007 foreign workers (1.8% of all industries) and 6,311 accommodation establishments employing foreign nationals. This is small compared with eating and drinking places (268,769 people), but because these workers tend to concentrate in front-desk and guest-service roles that deal directly with guests, their presence in reviews is larger than their numbers suggest. Reviews of hotels in Osaka, Fukuoka and Okinawa — where multilingual-support mentions are frequent — describing staff whose native language is Korean or Chinese at the front desk at night or during busy hours are consistent with this change in employment structure.

On the policy side, the accommodation field of the “Specified Skilled Worker” residence status serves as the channel. According to the Immigration Services Agency’s field-specific information, Specified Skilled Worker (i) foreign nationals in the accommodation field may engage in “provision of accommodation services such as front desk, planning and public relations, guest service and restaurant service,” and receiving organizations must hold a “ryokan/hotel business” license under the Inns and Hotels Act and be members of the Accommodation Field Specified Skills Council established by the Japan Tourism Agency. The expected intake for (i) (maximum over five years) is 23,000. In materials submitted by the Japan Tourism Agency to the 10th council meeting in February 2025, the cumulative number of Specified Skilled Worker (i) residents in the accommodation field rose from 15 at the end of December 2019 to 614 at the end of November 2024, and there were 3 under (ii) (a role supervising multiple employees), which began operation on August 31, 2023. A private-sector site explaining the system cites figures it attributes to the Immigration Services Agency’s end-of-June 2025 release — 1,265 under (i) and 17 under (ii), for a total of 1,282 — which would mean a doubling in just over half a year, yet still less than 10% of the expected intake of 23,000. Judged by the size of the ceiling, the intake of foreign talent into the accommodation industry is only now entering its full-scale phase. Prefecture-level differences in where these workers are concentrated are examined in our analysis of specified skilled worker density and job-opening ratios by prefecture.

Implications for Operations — When to Staff Multilingual Employees, and How to Split Roles with Translation Tools

Organizing the above from an operational perspective yields two practical implications. The first is staffing hours. The moments reviewers describe as “we could communicate” concentrate around check-in and check-out, late-night inquiries and problem handling. As the reviews of Hotel Wan Osaka Ebisu that thank late-night reception staff by name show, multilingual staff have the greatest impact at times and in situations where there is no room to open a translation app and explain. A design that adds language depth during the 15:00–19:00 check-in peak and the first few hours of the night shift, while keeping a Japanese-centered setup during daytime cleaning and preparation hours, is a realistic option for raising mention rates without adding headcount.

The second is the division of roles between translation tools and people. Standard information — facility guidance, how to use equipment, nearby restaurant information, check-out procedures — can be adequately covered by multilingual information cards, QR codes and translation devices. What people should handle instead is exceptions such as “discrepancies in the reservation,” “illness,” “lost items” and “changes due to transport delays”; having staff who can respond in a language close to the guest’s native tongue in these situations is what tends to be recorded in reviews. The fact that Okinawa Hinode Hotel’s reviews in both English and Chinese say “there was staff at the front desk who could speak our language” can be read as an example of a working split: routine by systems, exceptions by people.

Prioritizing languages by market is also effective. In Tokyo and Kyoto, English accounts for 30% of reviews, so raising the baseline of English support comes first, with European languages such as French and Spanish supplemented by translation tools. In Osaka and Fukuoka, Korean has a high share, and in Okinawa, Chinese (Traditional-character markets) and Korean; there is ample room to hire and deploy staff who speak these languages in addition to English. The current situation, in which Specified Skilled Worker “Accommodation” residents number less than 10% of the expected intake, means there is still plenty of institutional room for properties that will now bring staff from Asian countries onto the front desk. Regularly counting how often terms like “in English” or “in Chinese” appear in your own reviews, and using changes in the mention rate to measure the effect of hiring and staffing, is also something that can be started without any investment.

Summary

The top 100 hotels for English-support reviews cluster in urban markets where English reaches 30% of reviews — Tokyo 43, Kyoto 16, Osaka 13 — while the multilingual top 100 lean toward markets where Korean and Chinese make up 11–21% of reviews — Osaka 36, Fukuoka 16, Okinawa 14. The top properties have a median of 160–170 rooms, and apartment-style properties, machiya, hostels and small hotels with 100 rooms or fewer make up 30%, while airport hotels and large city hotels rank high on mention count but keep mention rates in the 1–2% range. Behind this lie a change in employment structure — 47,000 foreign workers in accommodation and 17.1% year-on-year growth across accommodations and food services — and institutional headroom, with Specified Skilled Worker “Accommodation” residents at less than 10% of the 23,000 intake ceiling. Narrowing the staffing hours and designing a split — standard information to tools, exceptions to people — matched to each market’s language mix is likely the shortest path to more “we could communicate” experiences showing up in reviews.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Does a higher mention rate mean the staff’s language skills are better?
No. The mention rate is the share of reviews that refer positively to English or multilingual support, and it indicates how likely the topic is to come up. At properties such as airport hotels, where English support is within expectations, guests are less likely to write about it even when it works, so the mention rate comes out low.

Q. Is the language of a review the same as the guest’s nationality?
No. English reviews include travelers who use English, such as those from Southeast Asia and India, and Japanese reviews include foreign residents of Japan. The language mix in this article is the share by language of posting; for the number of guests by nationality, please refer to the Japan Tourism Agency’s Overnight Travel Statistics Survey.

Q. What work can be done under Specified Skilled Worker “Accommodation”?
According to the Immigration Services Agency’s field-specific information, (i) workers engage in providing accommodation services such as front desk, planning and public relations, guest service and restaurant service, while (ii) workers do the same work while supervising multiple employees. Receiving organizations must hold a ryokan/hotel business license and join the Accommodation Field Specified Skills Council.