Tokyo is giving residents ¥5,000 staycation discount with the Motto Tokyo campaign

Originally published at Timeout.com

There is plenty of staycation offers these days where Tokyo residents can stay in luxury hotels at a fraction of their usual rates. Now, these deals are about to get even sweeter with a new campaign by the Tokyo government. 

Last Friday, Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike unveiled the Motto Tokyo campaign, created to encourage people to explore within the metropolis. With this promotion, Tokyo residents can get up to ¥5,000 discount on an overnight stay and up to ¥2,500 discount on day trips – both within Tokyo. 

The discounts will be made available through travel agencies, which the government is in the process of recruiting. Packages that include the Motto Tokyo discount will go on sale from October 23 and can be booked for any day between October 24 2020 and March 31, 2021. The budget allocated for the campaign is expected to cover up to 400,000 hotel nights. 

Here’s where it gets better: you can use the Motto Tokyo discount along with the Go to Travel discount for greater savings. The minimum spends required to use both discounts concurrently is ¥9,000 for an overnight stay. But if you’re just using the Motto Tokyo discount on its own (ie, without the Go to Travel discount), you’ll only need to make sure your overnight stay is at least ¥6,000. Essentially, this means that if you use both discounts for a hotel that only costs ¥9,000 a night, you might only have to fork out ¥850 from your own pocket. 

The same principle applies to day trips, where the minimum spend requirement to utilize both discounts is ¥4,500, or ¥3,000 if you’re just redeeming the Motto Tokyo discount. 

Details are still being finalized for the campaign and the government will continue to recruit travel agencies until December. However, we’ve got high hopes on the staycation packages that could follow.