Osaka Prefecture to follow Tokyo’s example to make hotels ‘barrier free’ for 2025 Expo

Written with extracts from The Mainichi Shimbun

August 31st 2019

For the Osaka Kansai Expo in 2025, all guest rooms and hotels and inns in Osaka Prefecture that are newly established in the prefecture will be obliged to be barrier-free and designed for wheelchair users.

According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, the approach will follow the example set by Tokyo, which is preparing for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. A new ordinance which went into effect in Tokyo on September 1st, stipulates that standard rooms in hotels and lodgings with renovated, newly or additionally constructed floor space of over 1,000 square meters must provide doorways at least 80 centimeters wide and bathroom entrances that are a minimum 70 cm wide.

The policy is to make more detailed regulations that affect the city, such as making public facilities barrier-free.

A revised welfare town development ordinance will be submitted to the prefectural government within the fiscal year, aiming for enforcement in September next year.