The Most Interesting Thing Hoshino Resorts Is Doing Isn’t Luxury

Most of the attention paid to Hoshino Resorts goes to Hoshinoya, its luxury flagship, the ryokan reimagined for the top of the market, the perfect onsen and tatami mat rooms in Karuizawa, and the Kyoto property you reach by boat as the leaves change color in the fall. It is a brand that in-the-know Aman watchers track, and the one that gets held up in the insider luxury discourse as proof that Japan does quiet, ceremonial, ultra-high-end better than anyone.

That reputation is deserved. But brand watchers working in other tiers of the market should be paying closer attention to what is happening one rung down, with a hotel that starts considerably cheaper.

OMO is Hoshino's fourth brand, launched in 2018, and it competes on paper with Japan's business hotels, the functional boxes near train stations that salarymen or business travellers on a tighter corporate budget sleep in.

Yoshiharu Hoshino, the fourth-generation CEO, didn't build it