How do you say check into a hotel room in Japanese?

6 comments

1. チェックインしたいです is both correct and appropriate. The concept of ‘checking in’ to a hotel arrived with the concept of hotels in general and has just remained English.

   I don’t know how hotels work outside of Japan but here we will not know our room number until we check in so there is no need to specify 〇〇にチェックインしたいです.

   寝室 is bedroom and is only appropriate if you are referring to a room that is separate from other rooms in which you do not sleep. This, however, is uncommon in Japanese hotels. Usually it is a single room- even in larger hotels the rooms are generally open concept. 部屋 is correct for hotel room.

2. チェックインお願いします is perfectly fine to request a check-in; you wouldn’t use したい in that context in my opinion; sounds a little too forward. お願いします is more natural. I’ve heard native Japanese speakers do hotel check-in like this countless times.

   You can follow up with 今日からX泊X日で予約しました。Insert the amount of nights and days where the X is. So 3 nights and 4 days would be 今日から3泊4日で予約しました。

   予約=reservation, booking

   In my experience, that’s more than enough. After, they ask your name and you hand over your passport and they confirm your booking, handle payment, etc and check you in.

   部屋 is perfectly fine for room.

   Edit: I’ve seen another comment greenlight したいです as well, so you’ll be fine using your suggestion as well! :3

3. I work at a Japanese hotel. チェックイン is not only a safe bet, but the word every Japanese person uses. So you just say チェックインです or チェックインお願いします or something along those lines. Totally normal

4. As far as I know, you don’t know what room number you’re ever actually going to be checking into, so don’t worry about that.

   Meanwhile, as has been stated multiple times: you go to the front desk (which is actually called フロント in Japanese), say チェックインです、and then show a form of identification. They bring you up in the computer system, hand you some other info about the hotel (amenities, breakfast, check-out time, etc.), and then give you your room key and point out which room number you have.

   Granted, I’ve also only ever made reservations at hotels, never a straight-up walk in the front door and hope a room is available. Mostly because this is the more expensive way.

5. When I was in Japan, すみません、予約があります usually seemed to work well enough. At the very least, it set the expectations for where my Japanese language skills are, lol.

6. Everything in a hotel is katakanized English.

   Check-in, check out, room key, room number (though that can also be Japanese),

   But discussions about length of stay and what not are the Japanese terms that sound weird to us in English, as we only talk about the nights, and Japanese people tend to count both nights and days.

   The only proviso is of course that common words like Air Conditioner are shortened. Front desk is just front; etc.

   In many of these cases using the ‘proper Japanese’ words would be confusing.