Hoshino Resorts Wants to Take Japanese Hospitality Overseas
25.08.2023 - 13:50
/ skift.com
/ Sean Oneill
/ Hyatt Hotels
Yoshiharu Hoshino, the CEO of Hoshino Resorts was named the “master entrepreneur of the year” in Japan by the consultancy EY.
The company strives to take a purpose-driven approach to running hotels while also reflecting Japanese culture. Key pillars of the philosophy include:
Hoshino runs five main brands:
Hoshino Resorts handled the pandemic crisis relatively well.
Hoshino sees an opportunity to try to build outside of the best-known places to encourage tourist dispersal to combat overtourism and let visitors see different sights.
Six months ago, Hyatt Hotels said it planned to launch a brand, Atona, as part of a 50-50 joint venture with Kiraku, a company that works to apply capital to help preserve the best of Japan’s cultural and natural assets. Atona would compete with traditional ryokans like Hoshino Resorts offers.
Hoshino has been testing the subscription model with its Kai brand.
Hoshino Resorts usually takes an asset-light approach and doesn’t put capital into projects. An exception is its new project in Guam that opened on April 1.
Hoshino Resorts wants to expand abroad.
Hoshino isn’t interested in branded residences in most instances, despite the category being hot with hotel investors.
In Japan, one of the Hoshino family’s landmark moves a decade ago was to put its assets (including its traditional wooden ryokans) into a real-estate investment trust (REIT) a concept that was rare in Japanese hospitality a decade ago.
Meanwhile, Hoshino opposes what he calls hotel “brand bloat.“
The pandemic revealed that Japanese travel spending abroad has been much larger than realized.
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