I would also guess Kinosaki's international Tourism PR and tourism bureau was also stronger. It isn't the most convenient onsen area to get to for a 2 week Golden Triangle speed run and really works better with longer holidays like EU & AU. The setup is fairly first or second time foreign visitor friendly with a ryokan supplied bath chit, a street facing beer keg kiosk, plenty of retail & alcohol shops, and an outdoor cultural show with dancers & music (at least when I was there). My guess is the inns were also bookable online in English or via the Tourism Center "back in the day" before some other ryokan town associations helped their inn owners get onto non-JP booking aggregates & English webpages. Allowing tattoos is probably a huge reason, too.

They've managed to preserve the feel of oshare strolling onsen town with public bathhouses and smaller inns in a pretty good condition. If you like such destination onsen villages, you've probably observed they require significant upkeep & reinvestment. There are other similar strolling onsen towns which haven't kept up to this level which probably has to do with the local inn keepers driving the economic flywheel and working more closely with the local government such as the tourism association, planning divisions to keep certain development groups from capitalizing on a gentrifying area with larger ryokan chains, and even JR/KNT to promote the areas with posters, adding the town to a "model plan", tourism packages, station upkeep/expansion, & etc.

It isn't my favorite kind of onsen town or water but I do admire their business acumen and general upkeep. Also, for other onsen/ryokan lovers who have not been, check the threads and set your expectations accordingly. I visited because it is one of the major towns, like I visited Dogo Onsen Honkan (before the most recent remodel). Not onsen towns I'd revisit on my own due to personal preferences and cost performance evaluations but happy to suggest it to a first or second time foreigner who likes being more social, is willing to get off the triangle track, and is feeling a bit anxious about offending Japanese people with improper manners or faux pax. There's little worry here as many of the people I saw in the baths were also not Japanese ;p Would happily revisit Hyogo, Tottori, and Matsuyama/Ehime.

Interestingly one of the ryokan managers in Ehime said they'd been getting more European visitors during my visit in 2018. His ryokan hired Nepali staff partially to support the foreign visitors https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2...0broker%20said. He mentioned there are hospitality focused Japanese training programs in Nepal. It sounded similar to how cruise lines setup hiring pipelines in certain countries. We had this conversation in English while he drove me back to the train station and ryokan is part of the New Awaji group https://www.newawaji-hotels.com/. He seemed pretty aware of which foreign demographics tended to visit specific areas.