The first thing to settle about difficult guests is not what you think of them, but where a fair complaint ends and damage to the people doing the work begins. When that line moves from person to person, two similar cases are handled differently inside the same building, and the softer of the two becomes the benchmark for the next demand.
What follows comes from the 489 reservations our three buildings and six rooms in Tokyo and Sapporo took in the twelve months from October 2025 to September 2026, and from our own policy on customer harassment, published on 23 June 2026. How the figures are counted is set out on our operating data page. Everything here is a count of reservations, a share or a number of days: no amounts.
Where does a fair complaint end and harassment begin?
The line is drawn at how something is demanded, not at what is demanded.
Customer harassment (カスハラ, kasuhara, the contraction used across Japanese service industries) means conduct from a customer where, measured against how reasonable the demand itself is, the means and manner of pursuing it go beyond what is socially acceptable and damage the working environment of the people serving. That is the definition written into our published policy and we run it unchanged. The second half is the part that does the work. A demand can be entirely fair and still be pursued past the line. Equally, a complaint delivered sharply but with a fair point inside it is something to fix, and if we got it wrong we apologise and fix it.
Draw the line around the content instead and the person on site is asked, every single time, how much they should put up with. Draw it around the manner and what is being judged is the conduct rather than the person, so a different member of the team reaches the same answer. In practice that is the only thing that matters.
| What is being said | Handled as a fair complaint | Treated as past the line |
|---|---|---|
| The air conditioning is not working | Send us a photo; we come back with an inspection and repair time | Calling every ten minutes through the night and demanding a staff member's personal number |
| The room is not what the photos showed | Tell us specifically what differs | A full refund and a free future stay demanded together, with nothing to support either |
| The room next door is noisy | Give us the time and the place; we go to the people involved | A discount demanded with a bad review hinted at |
| The cleaning was not done properly | Photos on the spot, then a re-clean or a reduction | Repeated remarks attacking the cleaner personally |
What actually comes in?
Rarely someone shouting. Far more often a fair grievance whose demand grows while it is being handled.
489 reservations over twelve months, divided by six rooms and twelve months, is about 6.8 arriving parties per room-month. In the overwhelming majority of those stays nothing happens at all. When something does, it tends to take one of five shapes.
- A genuine fault with the room, where the conversation jumps to a full refund before the repair has even been offered
- The room is not what the photos showed, from a guest who has not read the listing. A railway line outside, no bathtub and no lift are the usual three
- More people than the booking covers, raised after arrival
- Relentless contact through the night and early morning, and complaints about a reply arriving minutes late
- Words directed at the cleaner, in the property, with nobody else there
What happens in the first thirty minutes?
Not arguing back, and not deciding a discount. Getting the facts and the times straight.
Our average stay is 3.3 nights. Once a guest is unhappy, what is left of the stay is a few days at most and usually only today and tomorrow, and that is the entire window in which anything fixable can be fixed. So the order is fixed too.
- Acknowledge receipt first, before answering the substance
- Write down what happened, when, and in which room, with the times
- Ask for a photo or a short video. A record made of words alone will not survive to next month
- Decide whether somebody has to go to the property
- Give a deadline before being asked for one: what will come back, and by when
- Keep the exchange inside the platform's own messaging, never on a personal number
When is a refund or a reduction given?
On whether something was actually wrong, never on how hard it is being pushed for.
When something was wrong we fix it: a re-clean, a replaced part, a substitute appliance, and a reduction when none of that is enough. The cost sits inside lines we already carry, cleaning at 17.0% of revenue and maintenance at 1.0% (as of 1 October 2026, over the preceding twelve months, operating data).
When nothing was wrong, we decline. It is not about the money, but the money is worth stating. One refunded night is about 1.8 changeovers of cleaning. At 83.7% occupancy and an average stay of 3.3 nights a room turns over about 7.6 times a month, and with cleaning at 17.0% of revenue one changeover is worth roughly 0.56 nights of rate. A concession that looks small moves the heaviest cost line by 1.8 changeovers.
The real reason to decline is not the cost, though. Give way once to a demand with nothing behind it and the same approach arrives with the next booking. Putting the test on whether something was wrong, rather than on how forcefully it is asked, exists for that one reason. Either way, granted or declined, the reason and what it rested on go into the record in the same form.
What if a bad review is used as leverage?
We do not pay it. The moment you do, your rating has become a bargaining chip.
Our published policy lists an improper demand made while hinting at a review or a social media post among its examples of harassment (published 23 June 2026). We hold to that with no exceptions.
Not because the stars are cheap. Our six rooms carry 398 reviews averaging 4.9 (as of 1 October 2026), and because the average sits on top of that count it takes several good reviews to cancel one bad one. Even so, a star bought under threat becomes the price of the next negotiation. The longer argument, that a rating is not collected but protected by removing the reasons it falls, is in guest ratings.
Two things get done instead. If something was wrong, fix it and write what was fixed into the public reply, which is read not by the guest who posted but by the next person deciding. And check whether the platform's own terms allow the review to be challenged. Removal is never promised.
How is the person on site protected?
By never leaving them to handle it alone. That is the first line of the policy and the one part of it we do not bend.
Inside the property the first person to take the words is almost always the cleaner. Cleaning is the single largest cost line at 17.0% of revenue, and it is also the only role with a body physically on site. To keep the judgement off that person, the rules on site are only three.
- Do not decide anything there. No answer on a refund, a change, or an exception, on the spot
- You may leave. If it feels unsafe, stop the work and go; nobody is second-guessed afterwards for having stopped
- Write down what was said exactly as it was said. No summarising, no softening
What is a published policy actually worth on site?
It gives the person taking it something to point to while it is happening. Our policy on customer harassment, published on 23 June 2026 and written in the spirit of the Tokyo Metropolitan ordinance on preventing it, states outwardly that nobody handles a case alone, that there is a place to raise it with no disadvantage for raising it, and that calls and interactions at the property may be recorded as part of those measures. The recording is for prevention and for establishing what happened, it is held by the representative director, and it is not used for anything else.
One caution. What an ordinance asks of a business differs by municipality and changes over time. Do not copy a template: check what your own municipality currently requires, and have your own wording read by someone qualified. Once it is published, a policy you cannot actually run is worse than no policy at all.
Can you refuse to accommodate someone?
Sometimes, and this article is not going to tell you which. Whether a booking may be refused depends on three things at once: what the Hotels and Inns Business Act (旅館業法, the statute our permits are issued under) provides, what your own accommodation terms (宿泊約款) say, and what the platform the booking came through allows. All three vary by property and change over time.
Working from a half-remembered clause, or from what another company does, is the most expensive mistake available in this corner of the business.
Our published policy does say that conduct amounting to harassment is met firmly, that depending on the situation we may break off the exchange, decline service or cancel the reservation, and that serious cases go to the police or to lawyers. That is a policy, though. What is actually available in a given case gets decided after going through this order.
- Ask the public health centre (保健所) that issued the permit how it stands now, and do not stop at a verbal answer: get the name of the provision it rests on and write it down (getting a hotel-business permit)
- Read your own accommodation terms. If they say nothing about refusing and the procedure for it, that is where the work starts, not with the guest
- Check the platform's terms for when a host may cancel, and what a cancellation does to the listing and the rating
- For anything genuinely unclear, ask the administrative scrivener (行政書士) or lawyer you already work with, the same day
- Record the decision, what it rested on, and what the guest did. If the same person comes back, the record is the only thing that will help
What changes if a management company takes this over?
The owner stops being the person who has to draw the line.
What wears an owner down running their own property is not the message arriving at two in the morning so much as deciding, from scratch every time, how far to give way. When the standard exists in advance, the person on site is not asked to judge it, and every case is recorded the same way, the same incident leaves something different behind. For properties we run, the monthly report says whether anything crossed the line that month and what was done about it. How the overnight first response itself works is in does guest support have to run 24 hours.
We work in Tokyo's 23 wards and the city of Sapporo, with properties that hold a hotel-business permit (旅館業許可, no annual cap on nights) or are going to get one. We cannot run a property that stays under the 180-night notification framework (permit or notification). We hold at most five properties at a time, and we do decline after a viewing (the properties we turn down).
The fee is performance-based from 20% of revenue, with nothing fixed to pay in a month without bookings. Every figure here is our own record and is not a promise of ratings or bookings for another property.
Tell us about the property and talk through where the line should sit