Despite great difficulty in making reservations, managed to book accommodations Reservations for National Travel Agency support began on October 11, except for Tokyo. The author, a family of three (one of whom is an infant), tried to book a 3-day/2-night trip to Kanazawa on a travel site, but the sites were all down due to over-access. Even when she successfully accessed the page, she was unable to make a reservation due to the “2.5 hour wait” and her conflicting work schedule. In the meantime, all the travel products that included transportation were sold out. I had no choice but to make a reservation for lodging only. Hoshino Resort had just set up a page dedicated to nationwide travel support, and it seemed easy to make a reservation, so I decided to use it. Let’s review the structure of the National Travel Support program. Although there are some differences from prefecture to prefecture, from October 11 to December 27, the program offers up to 40% off lodging rates (up to 8,000 yen discount per day, or 5,000 yen discount for non-transportation items). In addition, a regional common coupon that can be used at registered stores in the target prefectures will be distributed for 3,000 yen per person per night on weekdays and 1,000 yen per person per night on weekends and holidays. To use the coupons, applicants will need identification documents and a certificate of vaccination or a negative test certificate such as a PCR test. In addition, infants are eligible for the discount even if they are not charged for the trip, such as sleeping together. However, infants may not be eligible for some travel sites or hotels, so you need to check when making reservations. On the Hoshino Resort website, the system automatically calculates the discount amount and the number of coupons if you go through the normal reservation procedure. The national travel support system is difficult to understand because each prefecture has a different system, but the dedicated website made it easy to compare plans and make reservations smoothly. Now, for this trip, we decided to stay at OMO5 Kanazawa Katamachi by Hoshino Resort in Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture. On the Hoshino Resort’s dedicated website, I found a twin room “OMO5 Kanazawa Katamachi by Hoshino Resort” plan that did not include breakfast and included only a stay in Japan. (no meals)” plan, which is a stay-only plan with no breakfast. The normal accommodation cost is 30,800 yen. If the National Travel Support program is applied, the four-way discount on the room rate is 12,320 yen, and the maximum discount conversion is 20,000 yen. In the case of the nationwide travel support, the lower of the two amounts is applied, resulting in a discount of 12,320 yen and a total payment of 18,480 yen. This is in addition to the regional coupon voucher. Since the trip was for two nights and three days (Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday), the days to stay were converted to “weekdays”: 3,000 yen per person x 2 days x 3 persons, for a total of 18,000 yen. Since the infant portion of 6,000 yen, which is not included in the room rate, was included in the savings, the coupon price was deducted from the 18,480 yen, making the total cost 480 yen! The coupon was only 500 yen, which was a very reasonable price for the trip. Incidentally, I separately purchased a ticket from Haneda to Komatsu on JAL’s domestic air ticket time sale to Kanazawa. It was a pity that I could not get a discount on this ticket.
© Source travel watch