InterContinental Hotels Group announces the signing of Holiday Inn Osaka Namba in partnership with Japan Hotel REIT Investment Corporation.
JHR is the largest J-REIT (Japanese Real Estate Investment Trust) in Japan specialising in hotel property investment and currently owns 38 hotels across the country. The Holiday Inn Osaka Namba is the REIT’s first partnership with IHG.
The hotel, currently operating as the Hotel Vista Grande Osaka, will rebrand as Holiday Inn Osaka Namba by the end of 2016.
Hans Heijligers, head of Japan, IHG said: “Osaka saw 91 percent growth in international tourist numbers in 2015 and we are confident the brand awareness achieved by Holiday Inn’s global network of over 1,150 hotels will attract strong occupancies from international guests looking to stay with a familiar hotel brand.”
With a focus on increasing annual international visitor arrival numbers to 40 million by the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, Japan’s capital city and outlying regions are set to benefit from the tourism boom.
In Japan, there are Holiday Inn hotels in Sapporo, Sendai, Kanazawa and Miyazaki with Osaka now bringing the total to five.