I had thought that things would never be as good as the days of Go To Travel, but the recently launched National Travel Discount Program has me re-thinking this assessment.
For those unfamiliar, a brief description from the
Snow Monkey site:
In principle, the program provides eligible travellers with discounts of up to JPY5000 per person, per day are available for accommodation bookings while and up to JPY8000 for package tours that include the use of public transport. Vouchers of up to JPY3000 per person, per day are available for persons booking weekday travel, reduced to JPY1000 on weekends. In order to be eligible, travellers must be able to provide evidence of at least three COVID-19 vaccination or provide a negative PCR test within three days of their intended travel.
They also require official proof of residence in Japan (e.g. drivers license, My Number card, etc.), so unfortunately, this is of no use to foreign tourists.
Unlike Go To Travel, which had a higher maximum daily benefit limit that caused people to flock to high end luxury resorts, the current limit is the lower of 5000 yen per person per day or 40% off the total rate, which means the more reasonably priced locations will be the places to go to maximize the benefits received from this program.
All the way back in January, I had booked an eight night stay with the Workcation plan at a cottage at Prince Karuizawa Resort for mid-October. This was already a pretty good deal at 21,500 yen a night for three adults, with various freebies like free onsen, free bowling, free bicycle rental, etc. also thrown in with the rate. But by pure luck, this reservation ended up being right after the National Travel Discount Program went live. This brought the room rate down a full 40%, and gave us a total of 60,000 yen worth of vouchers to use throughout the stay. Vouchers can only be used at establshments that have registered with the system, which is mainly limited to restaurants and over priced souvenir stops, but with a bit of searching we also found a few clothing shops and even a grocery store that accepted them, so we had no trouble making good use of the entire allotment. Ultimately, I paid about 110,000 yen for the stay that would have otherwise cost around 200K, with an additional 60,000 yen worth of food and other benefits thrown in.
And for those people chasing hotel status, another bonus is that you receive points based on the amount
before the discount is applied. Thanks to that, this stay put me on the doorstep of renewing my Platinum status with the Seibu Prince Club. To finish it off, I have a weekday reservation at the Shin Yokohama Prince Hotel for 7000 yen, which will be discounted to 4200 yen and include 3000 yen worth of vouchers that I can spend inside the hotel for further Prince spend, netting me 10,000 yen worth of hotel spend for 4200 yen paid out of pocket.
The system is a bit complicated with regional differences, and some rates are not eligible for the discounts so care needs to be taken at the time of the booking, but overall this system is quite the boon to those that can take advantage of it.