Staying on track

JAPAN: When on holiday, some tourists don’t want hotel rooms that offer a view of beautiful countryside. In Japan, train enthusiasts want rooms that look out over railway lines.

Some 20,000 railway fans live in Japan, and they spend an average of nearly €1,500 on their hobby every year. The "Train View Plan" of the Hotel Mets Tabata near the Tabata station promises that its guests can see the rail tracks from the fourth floor or higher. “The majority of these customers are mothers in their 20s to 30s and their boys. But we do have repeat customers among adults,” says Koji Kuroda, front office manager.

Rooms in Tokyo’s Odakyu Hotel look out over Shinjuku station, one of the world’s busiest. Guests can watch the activity at the switchyard, where several high-speed, or shinkansen , train lines cross. As a souvenir, hotel guests receive a piece of railway track that has been made into a paperweight. “Train ‘otaku’ [fans] have been always around,” the hotel’s sales promotion director, Junji Negishi, told Japan Today newspaper. “But I think they have surfaced to the mainstream for the last couple of years.”

Guests are encouraged to have breakfast in their rooms, so as not to miss the chance to take pictures of passing trains.

Five hotels of Archon Hospitality group offer special deals for fans of Japan's new bullet train, Narita Express. Guests are encouraged to have breakfast in their rooms, so as not to miss the chance to take pictures of passing trains. Checkout times have been extended to allow for the train schedules.