Tips and Tricks for Japan’s Go To Campaigns

UPDATE 10/13: Funding for Go To has been restored back to 14000 yen/night per person in discounts, and the region coupon remain at the same limit of 6000 yen/night per person.

UPDATE 10/11: It seems like Go To is running out of money, the maximum you can get off the hotel rate is 35% up to 3500 yen/night per person, but you can still get 15% up to 6000 yen/night per person in regional coupons.

Due to coronavirus severely impacting Japan’s tourism industry, the Japanese government kicked off various campaigns titled Go To stimulate domestic travel while tourists from outside Japan were not allowed in the country.

The first of these was Go To Travel, which kicked off July 22, 2020 and is ending January 31, 2021, and promises 35% off accommodations up to 14000 yen/night per person and then later a 15% rebate up to 6000 yen/night per person in regional coupons which started October 1, 2020. Initially hotels in Tokyo prefecture as well as residents were excluded from the campaign, but now that case numbers have stabilized, Tokyo has been included from October 1, 2020. A Go To Eat campaign has also started on October 1, 2020, offering discounts and rebates off restaurants. Here are some tips and tricks to make full use of the campaigns, beyond what is generally available, which I will assume you are already aware of.

Hotels

First, how do you get the discounts on hotels? It took some time, but the discounts are automatically built into major OTAs, like Japanese ones (Ikyu, Rurubu, Yahoo Travel, Rakuten Travel, etc.) and some foreign ones including Booking.com and Agoda, Expedia.co.jp and Trip.com (DO NOT currently book with Trip.com, they don’t have their system set up and are attempting to mail me the regional coupons later). There are some major exclusions, like Hotels.com who is still evaluating how to implement the policy. You can also book flight and hotel packages to get a discount on your airfare too, but I haven’t bothered with this method as I typically am not doing roundtrips where I stay in the same place the whole time.

Every OTA does it differently, but generally while booking, they show you the discount you would get, and ask you for your home prefecture when booking (though this is now moot, given that every prefecture is included). Most will take the discount straight from the reservation price. Some eccentricities:

Google or TripAdvisor will mostly not display the discounted price, though sometimes will. But when clicking through to the OTA / hotel, generally the discount will display.

Agoda and Booking.com will sometimes fail to display the discount, especially when directly going to them or going through a cashback site instead of through say, Google or TripAdvisor. To combine cashback with your booking and force on the discount, you can go to the Go To campaign page of each site. However, note that not all hotels show discounts on Agoda and Booking.com. Agoda’s site and Booking.com’s site.

Ikyu tends to select only higher end hotels, and doesn’t list lower end ones. Ikyu also gives an extra 5% when paying online.

Expedia makes you claim your coupon after booking on their Go To campaign page.

If you book directly with a hotel site, which if you want to use your hotel loyalty benefits with chain hotels, either they will apply the discount for you, or you need to register your stay with Staynavi.

First, you need to register for Staynavi (sorry, all in Japanese!). After that, from your main page, you need to register your booking like so:

Hyatt didn’t end up supporting the campaign directly until later, but now discounts should automatically apply on checkout.

When you check-in, they sometimes will ask for your address as is normal when checking in at Japanese hotels. Sometimes I will get asked for my passport or residence card too, but very rarely. They should acknowledge your Go To coupon and it should apply at time of payment.

In person travel agencies also seem to be selling roundtrip travel + restaurant packages too at a discount, so check those.

Regional coupons

Starting October 1, 2020, you can also get coupons to use in regional shops of 15% of the value of your stay in ¥1000 increments (rounded down), which need to be used by 23:59 of your checkout day, and can be used in that prefecture and neighboring prefectures. The coupons will show which prefectures they are valid in. Since the system just rolled out, there are some kinks to it and every OTA and hotel handles it differently. Some hotels want you to show a barcode from the reservation and will give you physical vouchers. For others, you can obtain the coupon yourself through the official Go To Travel coupon site.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to why you would get physical coupons or digital vouchers. It seems like booking through some OTAs are always digital, some are always physical. Also, as noted above, DO NOT book with Trip.com right now, they are not set up for this and are planning to mail the vouchers later. The foreign booking agencies seem to not have implemented showing any information about this, but you should still be able to take your reservation info and put it into that site. You won’t receive your coupons until 3:00 PM the day of check in, so don’t try and retrieve your coupons until then.

First, you go to the coupon site and put in your reservation number from your OTA, then the OTA or hotel code, as well as prefecture of the hotel. There are some visual instructions lower on that page as well.

There is a OTA and hotel code lookup page, if your OTA did not provide that to you.

Next you will be shown a page where you can view your balance and issue coupons in ¥1000, ¥2000, ¥5000, and possibly higher increments. You cannot use a screenshot with the numbers in it, you must redeem through the website. Change won’t be given back, so it’s advised go over the desired coupon value you want to use, or slightly under.

After redeeming, you can’t actually view the redeemed coupon if you are using the site from desktop. You can send the coupon to yourself using LINE, or just copy the link on the LINE page and send it to your mobile. It looks like only Safari on iOS and Chrome on Google are officially supported (though on Android I was able to use Samsung Browser as well). You need to press the button on the page to scan a QR code the shop has, and the discount should apply.

Where are the coupons actually valid?

There’s a handy website with search and a map for that! It seems like most hotels and their associated shops and restaurants take them, some convenience stores like FamilyMart, as well as a small amount of restaurants, activities and tourist shops. It seems like there are some rare places don’t accept the digital vouchers, so be careful of that.

Go To Eat

There’s another campaign which has started, Go To Eat. There are 2 parts to this, one part is buying vouchers for 25% additional value = a 20% discount in 1000 yen increments that can be used at participating stores. The official campaign website is here. Unfortunately it seems like there is no clear list of restaurants yet. Each prefecture has its own site to purchase the vouchers, which you can find under the プレミアム付食事券の販売 section on the website. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like all prefectures are set up yet as of the writing of the post. I found out when I tried to look for the site to purchases vouchers for a meal in Fukuoka.

The other part is earning a 500 points for lunch or 1000 points for dinner for making reservations through online booking sites like tabelog.com or gurunavi. You can earn for up to 10 people on the same reservation. It seems like restaurants that support this should also support the discount vouches. I discovered this by accident when I went to reserve a restaurant on tabelog, and it was offering me 1000 T-points for making the reservation.

Tokyo

Since Tokyo was excluded from the Go To campaign until October 1, 2020, various hotels came up with staycation deals to encourage hotel business while staying in Tokyo and not potentially spreading coronavirus to other prefectures. Here are some lists of deals:
TimeOut Tokyo, Savvy Tokyo