When Hotel Meizanso, in the Miya hot spring district of Gamagori, Aichi Prefecture, welcomed a cohort of junior high school students from Nagoya at the end of September, it was the first time in months a large party of guests had checked in.
The number of bookings had plunged in the spring due to the spread of COVID-19, and the hotel had been closed for two-and-a-half months.
In normal times, Gamagori is rarely chosen as a destination for school trips. But after local governments asked people to refrain from traveling across prefectural borders, many schools decided to change the destinations for their trips to places nearby.