Zhou, a 25-year-old Chinese woman, was working at the front desk of an international five-star hotel in a provincial capital city in China just a year ago.
With a college diploma and some Japanese-language training, she was occasionally called upon by her supervisor to assist Japanese guests. But the additional responsibility did little to boost her pay. Her monthly salary remained just over RMB 3,000（about USD 450), with little change over two years.
While working at the hotel, Zhou picked up her Japanese textbooks again, having previously studied the language as a minor at university. She eventually passed the JLPT N3 exam and applied for jobs in Japan through a recruitment agency. To her surprise, within just two weeks, several remote hot spring hotels across Hokkaido and Japan’s Tohoku region had sent her job offers.
The fact that Zhou could secure a hotel job in Japan with nothing more than an N3 Japanese-language certificate highlights the country's increasingly acute labor shortage in the accommodation sector.
In recent years, as the number of international visitors to Japan has hit record highs, hotels across the country have been struggling to keep up with demand.
Statistics from Japan’s Immigration Services Agency and industry organizations show that, as of early 2026, the number of foreign workers employed in Japan’s accommodation sector under the Specified Skilled Worker visa program had surged nearly threefold year over year to 2,207. Yet this still accounted for just 14.9% of the government’s target quota.
Large numbers of young Chinese workers like Zhou are entering hotels and inns across Japan, primarily through the Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services visa category or by taking part-time jobs while attending Japanese language schools.
The further one travels into the mountainous, rural areas of Japan’s Tohoku region, the more severe the labor shortage becomes.
Take Akita Prefecture, for example. The prefecture has more than 10,000 hotel rooms, while residents aged 65 and above has reached 40.1% of the local population, the highest proportion in Japan. Meanwhile, hotels across the prefecture face occupancy rates as high as 90.4% during peak seasons.
While hotels across Japan are scrambling to recruit workers, China's hotel industry remains trapped in a cycle of intensifying competition for existing demand and talent attrition.
A 2025 survey by the China Hotel Association found that there were more than 370,000 hotels in China. Yet the industry continues to struggle to attract young workers, with surveyed accommodation businesses reporting an average annual employee turnover rate of 20.18%.
Faced with tightening corporate travel budgets and mounting pressure on room rates, many upscale hotels in China have pushed labor costs to the limit in an effort to protect profit margins.
Front desk staff and room attendants often earn modest base salaries of just RMB 3,000–4,000 (about USD 450-600) a month, while simultaneously facing multiple performance targets, including loyalty program sign-ups and online review management. The emotional toll of the job can far exceed its physical demands.
A comparison of entry-level wages in China and Japan highlights the financial appeal of working overseas.
Even with the yen trading at relatively low levels, the base salaries of over ¥200,000 (about USD 1,271) offered by Japanese hot spring hotels, combined with legally mandated overtime pay at 1.25 times the regular rate, remain highly attractive.
