The government has stopped using the pandemic as the excuse it needed to declare a state of emergency, impose self-quarantine after the dramatized scary image of an invisible virus crippled consumer spending. A deep scar the government left has remained fresh in the sectors vulnerable to the illusion-based pandemic measures. Hospitality, food service and leisure sectors are struggling to hide the scar when international tourists are allowed to cross the border into Japan to satisfy their shopping appetite. Restaurants and accommodation facilities in the Tokyo metropolitan area, suffering from the economic sacrifices imposed on them during the pandemic, have remained understaffed to serve a growing number of customers.
 
The price for failing to retain staff members during the period of reduced consumption is being paid by hotel managers and restaurant owners struggling to deal with a resurgence in international and domestic tourism. Thanks to the government’s discount program for domestic tourism, more and more tourists are drifting down to Tokyo Bay Tokyu Hotel near Tokyo Disneyland. With a growing number of guests, 10 % greater in the number of booked guests than the pre-pandemic period, the hotel manager is having a hard time maintaining the quality of service in the hotel with 20 % below pre-pandemic staffing levels when no rooms are available after November. Hiroaki Iwamoto, general manager of the hotel says, “Closing the restaurant on weeknights is inevitable as a result of being understaffed although this opportunity is too good to miss as a full-service providing company with a good reputation.”
 
A surge in international tourists visiting Japan is making leisure and hospitality businesses have a tough time supplementing lost workers with new ones, despite rising ratios of job openings to job applicants in Tokyo, Saitama and Chiba. In the Tokyo metropolitan area where an average hourly wage rose by 55 yen from 1,122 yen in May 2020 to 1,177 yen in August 2022, restaurants and amusement parks are doing desperate recruiting efforts to keep up with a growing customer demand. Loon Moon Group in Yokohama City, Kanagawa Prefecture running a Chinese restaurant with Chungking cuisine and Rose Hotel is turning former employees into temporary staff members as a stopgap at the eleventh hour. With a winter illumination event scheduled to be held at the end of October, County Farm Tokyo German Village in Sodegaura City, Chiba Prefecture is making a last-ditch attempt to fill jobs for customer service by appealing to job seekers through help-wanted ads offline and online. Food service and hospitality businesses used to relying on international workers are being hit hard as the weakening yen against the US dollar is decreasing the number of international job applicants in Japan.
 
Restaurant or hotel chains in the Tokyo metropolitan area are investing their energy and money in reducing the loss of sales caused by a labor shortage. An affiliate of Seibu Railways, Seibu Prince Hotels Worldwide Inc running a chain of Prince Hotels in Toshima Ward, Tokyo is relying on self-serve technology to reduce the burden of employees’ workload arising from the understaffed situation. By streamlining front-of-house staff’s workflow from check-ins to check-outs through a smartphone app, the technology also is giving the management side the flexibility to reassign the front-of-house members to other tasks. The hotel chains are aiming to put each employee in a skill-honing program to fill multiple roles in the workplace. Skylark Holdings with a restaurant chain in Musashino City, Tokyo is introducing a meal-serving robot, a self-checkout machine and an automated self-ordering system through a tablet equipped with a digital interface as a cost-effective solution to serve their customers with fewer staff members.