Winter-only Restaurant in Japan’s Nagano Pref. Serves ‘Dinner Refugees’; JTB Aims to Facilitate Lodging Without Dinner

The Yomiuri Shimbun

17:54 JST, January 20, 2026

JTB Corp. has recently launched a winter-only restaurant at a hotel in Hakuba Village, Nagano Prefecture, which is known as a skiing spot.

Running until Apr. 4, the pilot project aims to serve “dinner refugees” — guests at accommodation facilities that offer “separate lodging and dining” packages, in which evening meals are not provided.

Chefs from various regions are dispatched to the restaurant every one to two weeks to prepare course meals, which start at ¥6,000.

According to JTB, snow resorts see a high number of tourists in winter, which makes operating a restaurant year-round difficult. Furthermore, labor shortages have led to an increase in accommodation facilities that do not serve dinner.

Meanwhile, foreign visitors to Japan tend to prefer dining at restaurants in the center of the town. With demand surpassing the supply of restaurants, tourists are sometimes unable to have a smooth dining experience, leading them to sometimes be referred to as “dinner refugees.”

JTB aims to revitalize tourist destinations by improving dining options and creating an environment where tourists can more easily choose accommodation that separates lodging from dining. The company plans to evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot scheme and consider rolling out short-term pop-up restaurants nationwide.