Who stays at love hotels? It might not be who you think.
The current inbound tourism boom is leading to a serious shortage in regular hotel rooms for traveling businessmen. Business hotels have the lowest vacancy rate ever, it seems, meaning the on-the-move salaryman has fewer choices for where to stay.
Where are they turning? According to this article on Ignition, it’s to love hotels.
It turns to Ken Sato, the manager of the HOTEL SULATA (their caps, not ours) chain, a new contender in the packed field.
It opened its main hotel in Dogenzaka, the “love hotel hill” district of Shibuya, in 2013. Since then it hasn’t looked back, opening 10 other hotels around Japan. Like many other love hotels, it accepts reservations from traveling businessmen.
HOTEL SULATA’s “Business Plan” — a pricing plan targeted at Japanese businessmen — launched a year after the company’s founding. But while outside observers might expect businessmen to feel resistance to staying in a sex hotel targeted at couples, Sato says this hasn’t been the case.
“SULATA is a love hotel, but in terms of the layout of the hotel and the amenities, it isn’t very different from a standard business hotel. There’s a parking lot, and every room comes with an air purifier and a wi-fi connection, so it’s actually a fairly comfortable place to get some work done. Plus, since the rooms are designed to be used by two people, the bed and bath are relatively large. I think single guests are feeling more and more at ease staying here.”
A quick look at the SULATA homepage reveals an interface that quickly allows business customers to make their own reservations. Compared to business hotels, where a 14-square-meter single room can cost as much as ¥30,000 during peak periods, love hotels offer comfortable accommodations at significantly lower prices.
The “business plan” makes up 10% of SULATA’s custom, helped by the popularity of the love hotel’s high-end breakfast options.
Many foreign tourists are also apparently turning to love hotels as options, not least because amenities are now so good (SULATO even has multi-lingual signage outside, it seems) and due to their central location in areas like Dogenzaka, plus there are even increasing numbers of girls’-night-out options targeted only at women.
“We can see that demand is clearly rising from businessmen who can’t find anywhere else to stay,” says Sato, “and we’re getting more and more repeat customers who keep coming back after they stay here the first time. Looking ahead, we’re thinking of introducing even more services targeted at business customers, including a cleaning service for dress shirts and receipts that can be used with corporate expense accounts. Beyond the couples and foreign visitors, I think you can say that we create an atmosphere for businessmen that isn’t very different from staying in a business hotel.”
