Japanese hotels cost 2.3× more on a Saturday. In Bali, the day of the week does not exist
We re-ask the price of 4,369 hotels across 25 Asian cities every day and keep every answer. 2,325,767 of them so far. This is the first thing that jumped out.
1. The ratio, city by city
Third Tuesday against third Saturday of the same month
Same city, same month, same room count. We hold everything else still: two adults, one night, hotels only (no whole-apartment rentals), and the median rather than the mean so a handful of suites cannot drag the number around.
| City | Tuesday | Saturday | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fukuoka | 116,654 | 269,573 | 2.31× |
| Nagoya | 96,009.5 | 198,362 | 2.07× |
| Taipei | 67,702 | 135,597 | 2.00× |
| Beppu | 122,444 | 241,837.5 | 1.98× |
| Osaka | 63,999 | 115,987 | 1.81× |
| Tokyo | 83,515.5 | 139,170 | 1.67× |
| Kyoto | 103,456.5 | 171,735.5 | 1.66× |
| Sapporo | 113,076 | 184,912.5 | 1.64× |
| Kagoshima | 69,113 | 112,434 | 1.63× |
| Okinawa | 79,301 | 109,930 | 1.39× |
| Hakodate | 83,162 | 112,168 | 1.35× |
| Hong Kong | 98,506 | 126,065 | 1.28× |
| Singapore | 138,946 | 170,316 | 1.23× |
| Kuala Lumpur | 23,816 | 26,835 | 1.13× |
| Bangkok | 30,357 | 31,628 | 1.04× |
| Koh Samui | 67,148 | 69,818 | 1.04× |
| Kota Kinabalu | 34,875.5 | 36,236 | 1.04× |
| Phuket | 48,944 | 50,297 | 1.03× |
| Maldives | 97,125 | 99,613 | 1.03× |
| Nha Trang | 25,709 | 26,214 | 1.02× |
| Cebu | 22,054 | 22,125 | 1.00× |
| Bali | 17,743 | 17,743 | 1.00× |
| Da Nang | 34,153.5 | 34,091 | 1.00× |
| Phu Quoc | 44,447 | 43,579 | 0.98× |
Figures are Korean won, the currency we record everything in. The ratio is what matters here, and a ratio is the same in any currency.
Japan and Taiwan run 1.35× to 2.31×. Southeast Asia runs 0.98× to 1.04×. In Nha Trang, Cebu, Bali, Da Nang, Phu Quoc the day of the week barely registers at all.
2. The whole week
Indexed so both ends fit on one axis
Plotting the raw numbers does not work: Fukuoka on a Saturday and Bali on a Saturday are an order of magnitude apart, and the lower line flattens against the floor. Setting Tuesday to 100 keeps only the thing we care about — how much a city moves.
Tuesday = 100. Hover any point for its value. This chart is not the same data as the table above. The table comes from dates pinned to a specific Tuesday and Saturday; this comes from a rolling window where all seven weekdays appear. Two different slices, nearly the same ratios.
| City | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fukuoka | 93 | 100 | 103 | 109 | 134 | 223 | 105 |
| Tokyo | 94 | 100 | 107 | 114 | 127 | 171 | 94 |
| Bangkok | 101 | 100 | 103 | 107 | 109 | 107 | 102 |
| Bali | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
Saturday is not where it starts. Friday in Fukuoka already runs 44% above Monday.
Bali goes the other way entirely: all seven days land between 17,720 and 17,843 won — a spread of 0.7%. There is no weekend there, price-wise.
3. Not a one-month fluke
Same ratio, six months running
A single festival weekend could produce a number like this. So we split it by month.
| City | 2026-09 | 2026-10 | 2026-11 | 2026-12 | 2027-01 | 2027-02 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fukuoka | 2.63 | 2.17 | 2.47 | 2.43 | 2.39 | 1.93 |
| Bali | 1.05 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.01 | 0.96 |
It holds every month.
4. Public holidays barely move it
The weekend is a stronger force than the calendar
Across the six Japanese cities, an ordinary weekday sits at 83,801 won. Measured against that:
| Date | vs. weekday |
|---|---|
| Most expensive Saturday 2026-11-21 | 2.17× |
| 일본:근로감사의 날 2026-11-23, Mon | 1.10× |
| 한국:추석 연휴 2026-09-24, Thu | 0.95× |
The Korean Chuseok holiday — one of the two big travel weeks of the Korean year — lands at 0.95×. Slightly below an ordinary weekday. Japanese hotel pricing is set by Japanese weekends, not by who is flying in.
5. How this was measured
- 2026-08-08 to 2026-08-25 (18 days), asked at the same time each day.
- Held constant: 2 adults, 1 night, hotels only, median not mean.
- Rates are as observed — before coupons, excluding taxes and service charges. Checkout will be higher.
- What this cannot tell you: how far in advance to book. That needs a single date tracked from months out all the way to arrival; 18 days is not enough yet.
- What this cannot tell you: which city is cheapest overall. Our sample skews to different hotel grades in different cities, so raw city-to-city price comparison is not sound. Ratios within a city are.