With more tourists – both domestic and inbound – traveling into Japan than ever, municipalities are looking for ways to collect additional revenue they can use to help handle the influx. This week, Kyoto announced its intentions to drastically raise its loading tax by up to ten times for the city’s most expensive properties.
Kyoto already imposes a sliding scale tax on rooms based on their cost per night. The cheapest rooms, costing under 6,000 yen (USD $37.99) a night, only carry a 200 yen ($1.27) per night tax. However, even the most expensive rooms only carry a 1,000 yen ($6.33) per night tax.
Under the new schedule, cheap rooms would still carry a low tax. However, for rooms that cost between 20,000 and 50,000 yen ($126-$316), travelers will now pay a 1,000 yen per night tax. That goes up to 4,000 yen ($25.33) for rooms up to 100,000 yen ($633) a night.
Travelers who like to be puttin’ on the ritz when they stay in hotels will pay the most. Taxes on a room over 100,000 yen will be a whopping 10,000 yen ($63) per night.
The tax will be the highest losing tax anywhere in Japan. The city projects it’ll raise around 13 billion yen ($82M) with the new tax structure. That’s double what it currently collects.
Kyoto says it intends to use the money raised to invest in the city’s train stations. Particularly, it wants to put fall (and, I assume, suicide) prevention barricades on station platforms and implement measures to relieve congestion at Kyoto Station.
The fee structure feels calculated to make money off of inbound tourism while continuing to keep cheap local lodging reasonably affordable for domestic tourists and business travelers. Some domestic travelers have complained that room price inflation driven by tourism has been pricing them out of the market for decent rooms at affordable rates.
Lodging taxes are nothing new in Japan. However, the record number of tourists coming to Japan has led to congestion and overcrowding, both at tourist sites and on public transit. Kyoto has already instituted measures to relieve bus congestion by introducing tourist-only buses for some of the city’s most popular destinations.
With famous sites such as Kiyomizudera and Kinkakuji, the old city remains a popular draw for tourists both foreign and domestic. However, with more tourism has come more problems, such as people harassing geisha and maiko, and trespassing in private areas.
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