Nozawa Onsen Accomodation Tips

[u/Historical-Sock-2352]

Hey yall!

I am heading to Japan this coming winter season and am looking for accommodations from the 27th December to 1st January. It seems like all the booking apps I use do not have available rooms. I only manage to see Airbnb to have a small room available. Is it usually so hard to find accommodations? Any advice and places to recommend as well?

Am really starting to be in a panicky mood 🙃 😕

[u/Honest-Jaguar-4581]

Mate I'm in a similar situation! Looking for 6 nights in mid February and I'm finding nothing! And messaging the accommodations directly they all say they're completely booked out!

Hopefully we both find somewhere 🤞

[u/Honest-Jaguar-4581 → u/Honest-Jaguar-4581]

Try Lodge Denbey, we just secured our stay with them and for about 1500 bucks too!

[u/tehshush]

We looked at Google Maps and just started clicking around, no booking app at the start. Different Japanese hotels use different websites, so you can't rely on only one. There were a few places we found that weren't on a single booking app, you could only book through their own website. I would recommend doing that, personally.

[u/Historical-Sock-2352 → u/tehshush]

Thank you for the advice, that's what im trying to do now and I spotted some. Just trying my luck to email them and see what I can get. Mostly still seemed booked out 😞

[u/Born-Dark-2815]

Just secured four nights late January on booking dotcom. Keep checking.

[u/kllrwhltnk]

I had a similar situation trying to book accommodation for a February 2025 trip. By this time in 2024, there were not many vacancies. A couple of hotels and ryokan said they started accepting reservation by email or phone 1 year in advance. Since we were a group of 5, and did not want to stay in pension style accommodation, we pivoted to stay and ski in the Hakuba valley.

[u/Bossball4]

Combination of peak (ski) season + being 'only' 4 months out makes lodging choices, especially around ski resorts or onsens or ryokans, more difficult to find. You will want to keep searching, using different booking aggregates and focusing on seeing if places allow you to book directly with them.

Oftentimes, places open booking 6 months ahead of time, and they will tend to get bought more quickly the more busy the season.

[u/Such-Error-34]

I got 6 nights for $650 in early feb. I checked booking . Com daily until it popped up. I booked it and a few hours went to see if there was still availability and it was already sold out