Published on
October 6, 2025
Kyoto, a city with rich culture, plans to introduce a new accommodation tax to deal with the ongoing problem of overtourism. Beginning March 1, the city will charge a tax of 10,000 yen ($68.3) per person per night for hotel stays, a steep rise from the previous 1,000 yen tax. This tax will be levied on high-end hotel stays, with revenue earmarked for city infrastructure improvements and congestion-easing measures, to improve the level of services offered to visitors and residents.
This new tax will give Kyoto more control over the overcrowding that has become a problem for the city. Locals and tourists alike have suffered from the congestion on streets, public transport, and historical sites. The city has had difficulty balancing the needs of tourism with the preservation of culture and the comfort of the residents.
Managing Overtourism in Kyoto
Kyoto is one of Japan’s oldest cities which is well known for having shrines, temples, and various historical sites, which adds to its allure. The city has several sites to offer visitors, among them the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, Fushimi Inari Shrine, and Kinkaku-ji. Every year, millions of tourists visit the city; however, the explosion of the city’s popularity has put unprecedented stress on the city’s public transport system and the ability to maintain historical city sites.
In order to dampen the effects of overcrowding, the city of Kyoto has levied an increase in the accommodation tax for certain classes of tourists, for example, for the accommodation at top-end hotels, which is above 100,000 yen per night. Although a very high-earning and luxurious tourist will be the first to pay this new tax, they will also be the first to experience a better overall tourism system on offer.
They expect the 10,000 yen tax to be the highest tourist tax in Japan. This does demonstrate the city’s apprehension regarding the sustainability of its tourism activities. Although Kyoto is one of Japan’s most sought tourist locations, the city’s infrastructure is struggling to cope with the increasing volume of visitors every year.
The Effect on Kyoto’s Tourism Market
Kyoto is one of the most unique tourist destinations because of its balance of old and modern. This attracts tourists from all over the world, in addition to domestic visitors. This new accommodation tax aims to relieve the pressure on over-visited areas like the Gion District, the Philosopher’s Path, and the city’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites. These areas experience the most tourist activity to the point of saturation, leading to discomfort for both the visitors and the locals.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal, its unprecedented impact, and the Jasanoff-Skinner debate framed the research qualitatively. Rather than quantitative metrics or surveys, which too often result in Relevance Slicing, ethnographic methods and theory were employed.
Relevance Slicing is Melanie’s term for when a researcher, often perched high above the topic, descends to ‘borrow’ pertinent portions of a community’s behaviours to tack onto the problem framed, which too frequently is defined in world- or continent-level contexts, devised during and for a Western academic. There is often insufficient richness in the data to design and claim a grounded theory.
Each of the cases employed here parallels Ling’s notion of etiquette in the sense that participants faced dilemmas. Each was caught up in contexts of alien rule, empire and periphery, which were all viscerally dominant and steep, either economically, politically, or culturally, or all at once. Ling’s conception of etiquette elucidates norms layer upon their etiquette that the ‘basic’ question remains.
The newly established accommodation tax is related to Japan’s growing interest in sustainable tourism. The government has already made efforts to encourage a more even distribution of tourist visits across the country instead of concentrating on a few primary destinations. Kyoto’s new tax will help to contain the number of tourists while still allowing the city to reap the economic benefits of tourism without overwhelming its infrastructure.
Kyoto’s Economic Dependence on Tourism
Another major source of revenue for Kyoto is tourism. The new tax will help to upgrade the city’s infrastructure, and the funds will be used for tourism development and city beautification. The rise in the accommodation tax is the final step of a long series of processes designed to enhance the visit for tourists, like the recently instituted off-peak tourism initiative aimed at encouraging travel to Kyoto during the less popular periods.
On one hand, while paying more to reside within the city may be true, the value of the experience will become enhanced. Through constantly available, eco-friendly solutions to public transport, combined with added facilities and overall tourism objectives, a sustainable experience will be more likely to improve for the visitors.
What Tourists Need to Know.
As of the 1st of March, it is important to understand that there is a new accommodation tax upon visiting Kyoto. The new tax will be in effect for 5-star and other similar accommodations with a nightly rate above ¥100,000. At the end of a hotel stay, upon checking out, it is most likely that visitors will see the accommodation tax added to the bill. The tax is intended to improve the public management of facilities, along with the control of services such as transport, waste, and area clampdowns in the fluid tourist regions.
Conclusion
As a new measure to relieve the burdens of overtourism in one of the most loved cities in Japan, the accommodation tax will impact the luxury segment of the hospitality industry. It seeks to ease overpopulation, elevate visitor satisfaction, and preserve the city’s culture and points of interest for subsequent generations. In turn, the tax will allow tourists to sustainably access infrastructure investments needed to guarantee Kyoto remains a thriving, widely reachable centre of tourism.
As other cities and regions in Japan develop their own approaches to sustainable tourism, Kyoto will likely serve as a blueprint for other heavily trafficked locations around the world. Guests in the city will be able to relish improvements of their own, as will Kyoto’s commitment to a seamless integration of culture, history, and modernity.
