I am thinking of doing this as a gift for a friend to thank them for a huge favour. In my country, some hotels and hotel chains allow you to purchase a coupon to the value of a night’s stay to be redeemed whenever the receiver likes. I wondered if there’s such a thing in Japan and if so, can anyone recommend any (preferably quite nice) ryokan, hotel or chain that does this service?
I’m in Hokkaido, so ideally something up here, but Kyoto is also welcome as her boyfriend is from Kyoto.
(And of course, if this is the kind of gift that is considered low effort in Japan, let me know as well.)
Thank you in advance!
5 comments
I don’t have any ideas about coupons so feel free to stop reading here. I’m just wondering if the monetary value of this gift is in proportion. There is is terrifying chain of gift-and-return-gift-giving that you can enter where each gift gets about a third smaller. A Ryokan stay isn’t necessarily the cheapest so you might be putting pressure on your friends to return the favor at the socially accepted discount. And then you again. Obviously, I neither know you nor your friends nor the favor they did you. You need to work out if this is appropriate and don’t expect you saying “And it’s fine, you don’t have to give me anything back!” as the final say that they won’t feel the return gift pressure. Et cetera.
I think many big hotels (like Hilton) have their own gift-tickets, but there’s also gift catalogues that have hotel stay options. I sometimes buy gift catalogues from Sow and they work well. Here you have some examples that include hotels: https://www.sowxp.co.jp/experiences/hotel_stay
But I’m sure there are other brands as well 🙂
Yes some do. For example Hoshinoyas sell gift cards for stays for that purpose (just Google 星野や 宿泊ギフト券).
BTW, know that a lot of ryokan / resorts gift coupons can also be bought via furusato nozei.
I work for a high class Ryokan onsen in kansai and we do have those. For weekdays and weekends. So I guess it’s pretty common.
The best thing I could think of is instead of buying a hotel stay and kind of forcing them to maybe go somewhere they don’t want to, getting them JTB coupons to be redeemable wherever they want to go.