The facilities in the Kansai region presented their new plans for this fall and winter season, and information about the hotel that utilizes the “Former Nara Prison” was also released. In addition, Mr. Yoshihiro Hoshino, President of Hoshino Resort, spoke about his future plans for After Corona.
It will be a little while before we get a full picture, but we are looking forward to seeing how Hoshino Resort will prepare a hotel where you can stay in a “jail,” which is rare in the world.
Yoshimichi Hoshino said of the hotel, “The cell doors from the prison era will remain as they were, and the room will not be a place to enjoy the view because it was originally a prison, but there will be a lot of light coming in through the high windows that are unique to prisons, and it will be a mysterious space befitting a flagship. The room will be a mysterious space suitable for a flagship, with a full sense of “it used to be a jail”.
Hoshinoya Nara Prison, which will open in 2026, will be divided into two parts: a museum section that will tell the history of the former Nara Prison and a hotel section. The hotel section will consist of 48 rooms, each of which will be approximately 5 square meters in size, with nine rooms next to the cells that were used in those days.
The former Nara Prison was one of the five prisons built in five locations throughout Japan as the Five Great Prisons of the Meiji Era, and was completed in 1908. The building, with its distinctive red bricks, has high historical value as a modern architecture with excellent design, and was designated as a National Important Cultural Property in 2017.
The original plan was to open in the summer of 2024 as Japan’s first prison hotel, but the opening is now scheduled for the spring of 2026 because it took more time and money than anticipated to analyze and take measures against earthquakes, and because it was necessary to consider how to separate and operate the museum and hotel portions of the building.
The company announced that it will open a hotel utilizing a national important cultural asset, the former Nara Prison, in the spring of 2026 under the company’s luxury hotel brand, Hoshinoya Nara Prison. The ownership of the facility will remain with the national government, and Hoshino Resort will undertake the management of the facility on a concession basis.
Yoshimichi Hoshino, President of Hoshino Resort, talks about After Corona and its future prospects.
The world has been sick of Corona for almost three years, with inbound demand peaking in 2019. Travel to and from abroad was closed, and inbound demand quickly went downhill. In the face of such Corona disaster, Mr. Hoshino advocated micro tourism, tourism that can be done within an hour or two from home. Demand for short trips while avoiding the denseness of the Corona disaster had become active. However, inbound tourism is gradually showing signs of recovery starting with the relaxation of waterfront measures in October 2022. Next, Mr. Hoshino advocates “stakeholder tourism.
With the recovery of inbound travel, there was a belief that Japanese people would revive overseas travel and that the domestic travel market would become smaller. In reality, however, outbound has not recovered as fast as inbound, partly due to the weak yen. However, inbound travel has not returned as quickly as it did before Corona. That said, there is no need to rush back to the pre-Corona level (2019), Mr. Hoshino said. It is not enough to simply return the numbers to pre-Corona levels; the situation in 2019 is not the best. There are many challenges, and it is important to recover demand while solving these issues, he said.
The most important issue is the exhaustion of tourist destinations, represented by overtourism. In Kyoto and other famous tourist destinations, the concentration of large numbers of tourists has made road congestion and traffic congestion the norm. This has become a serious problem, affecting the lives of local residents.
Something surprisingly good happened during the Corona disaster,” Hoshino said. The Corona disaster caused tourists to disappear from famous tourist destinations. Local residents felt comfortable as the air was cleaner and the sea cleaner due to the lack of people coming and going, and there may have been some positive economic impact that tourism had had, but at the same time, it is precisely because of the experience of the Corona disaster that we were able to realize anew the negative impact that tourism had had on the region.
In “stakeholder tourism” newly proposed by Mr. Hoshino, a mechanism to seek a new model of tourism while having many problems visualized in the Corona Disaster solved, i.e., a mechanism to build a new model of tourism that includes the conventional tourism stakeholders, such as travel agencies, hotels (including investors) and other accommodation facilities, public Mr. Hoshino says that it is important to build a system that enables not only the “tourism industry” but also “travelers” and “local communities” to receive fair returns from tourism, including local communities such as local stores and local residents, as well as tourists, in addition to the conventional tourism stakeholders, such as travel agencies, hotels (including investors), accommodation facilities, public transportation facilities, and tourists.
In order for Hoshino Resort to contribute to “stakeholder tourism,” it is important to increase the number of nights, and the Iriomotejima Hotel has already begun an initiative to only accept guests staying two or more consecutive nights. Despite various hurrahs, they have been able to offer a wide variety of activities in cooperation with the local community. As a result, guest satisfaction has been very high.
If all travelers stay for one night and two meals, transportation and hotel operators will be enriched, but surprisingly, no money will fall into the local economy. In addition, CO2 emissions are not reduced because of the increased travel of passengers. Mr. Hoshino stated emphatically, “The industry needs to take proactive steps to increase the number of nights per trip.
© Source travel watch
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