With the yen weakening to its lowest level in 24 years, Japan has become an even more attractive “cheap country” for inbound travelers than before. Photo shows a pathway leading to Kiyomizu-dera Temple overflowing with foreign tourists (April 2019 photo/Afro). Tighter regulations banish “nuisance private accommodations” and aggressively attract “luxury hotels”. Overtourism is a situation in which excessive concentration of tourists has a negative impact. In Kyoto, overcrowding and rudeness by tourists have been a major problem since the mid-2010s. “It was around 2016 that the term “overtourism” itself began to be used more frequently. In Kyoto, littering, city bus congestion, and overnight stay disturbances, which had been recognized as individual problems, were all apparently being tied together as being caused by tourists.” Of these, Kyoto residents were most dissatisfied with the increase in overnight stays. “As the population of central Kyoto declined due to the aging of the population, many of the city’s residences were being replaced one by one with private accommodations and guesthouses,” he said. That is when problems began to occur, such as foreign guests drinking and making noise until midnight, and garbage not being sorted.” According to the Kyoto City portal site for private accommodations, the number of simple lodging houses more than doubled from 696 in 2015 to 1,493 in 2016. “As a countermeasure against overnight stays, Kyoto City has established a “rush requirement” for managers in its ordinance, which will be implemented starting in April 2020. This requires that a manager be stationed at all times during a guest’s stay, and that even small-scale facilities have a manager within 800 meters so that he or she can be on the scene within 10 minutes. In addition to this, barrier-free standards have been strengthened for all lodging facilities that require a license under the Inn Business Law. It is said that the city may be aiming to discourage the expansion of small-scale inns by imposing regulations that make it more costly to open an inn.” In addition, in 2016, the city established a private accommodations reporting and consultation service, and in 2017, it set up a specialized team to monitor and provide guidance to establishments. “In 2017, the city established a specialized team to monitor and provide guidance to private accommodations. The city claims to have eliminated 99% of illegal and illegal private accommodations over the past few years. I rarely hear citizens say they are troubled by private accommodations anymore.” However, the number of hotels and inns has been increasing ever since 2016. “As a measure to control the tourist population, the city of Kyoto has adopted a policy of making it harder for low-priced lodging such as minpaku and guesthouses to open, and instead encouraging upscale lodging to enter the market. This way, the number of tourists can be controlled. Conversely, the percentage of wealthy tourists will be higher, so the amount of tourism consumption and the price per guest will increase. In 2017, we also established a system to attract high quality accommodations. Many of the hotels that have opened in the past few years or will open in the future are luxury hotels.”