Watching fifteen of Japan's most contested New Year hotels — countdown, hatsumode and first-sunrise favourites from Yokohama to Kyoto — for cancellations on the December 29 – January 2 nights.
Watched nights: Dec 29–Jan 2. Base: Nationwide. This event is watched on demand. When its watch window opens, you can resume it from the page; the instant a highly-rated hotel frees up (a cancellation), 空きウォッチ Aki alerts you with a one-click Rakuten Travel booking link.
New Year is the hardest booking season in Japan. In our August 2026 live check, all fifteen hotels on this list were already full for New Year's Eve (the Dec 31 night) and ten for New Year's Day — while every one of them still had rooms on plain mid-December weekdays. Whether the rooms are held back for unreleased New Year plans or sold out on release, almost nothing can be booked head-on.
New Year stay plans go on sale in autumn, and cancellations cluster right after release and in the final one to two weeks before the night as free-cancellation deadlines hit — plus another wave after ticket lotteries for countdown shows announce results. 空きウォッチ Aki watches exactly the fifteen properties below for the December 29 – January 2 nights each year. (Some inventory appears only on official or other booking sites.)
Popular hotels' New Year nights typically fill on release day — in 2026 the Dec 31 night was already full at these hotels by August. Realistically you either catch the autumn on-sale moment or a cancellation around free-cancellation deadlines — and this page watches both (a plan release surfaces as a reappearing room too), automatically.
The fifteen that headline the countdown / hatsumode / first-sunrise season and were measurably full for the New Year's Eve night: Yokohama Bay Hotel Tokyu, InterContinental Tokyo Bay, New Otani Inn Yokohama Premium (#1 on Rakuten's first-sunrise-plan ranking), Hotel Okada Hakone-Yumoto, Imperial Hotel Tokyo, The Peninsula Tokyo, InterContinental Yokohama Pier 8, Hotel Granvia Kyoto, Nagoya Prince Hotel Sky Tower, Satoyama Retreat Keburikawa Kyoto, Tokyo Dome Hotel, InterContinental Yokohama Grand, Kamogawa Grand Hotel, The Westin Yokohama and Hotel Metropolitan Edmont.
No. Rakuten Travel has no official vacancy-alert feature. 空きウォッチ Aki is an independent, free tool that watches for those reopenings and alerts you with a one-click booking link the moment one appears.
See the other watched events