Japan's hotel rates rose 9.7% in September; services PPI ex-shipping held at 2.9%
Serguey Asael Shinder1 min readJapan's Services Producer Price Index rose 3.7% from a year earlier in September 2026, according to preliminary figures released by the Bank of Japan on 27 October. That is up from a revised 3.5% in August and the highest annual rate in the bank's table for 2026; the index stood at 115.5 (2020 = 100) and rose 0.3% on the month.
Excluding international transportation — international air passenger and freight services, ocean freight, ocean tankers and international mail — the index rose 2.9% year on year, unchanged from August, and 0.2% on the month. The gap between the two measures shows where the acceleration came from.
In the bank's breakdown of contributions to the change in the annual rate, ocean freight transportation added the most, about 0.20 percentage points, with its own annual rate rising from 74.6% in August to 97.7% in September. Hotels contributed 0.14 points as their annual rate rose from 1.6% to 9.7%. Smaller positive contributions came from road freight, travel arrangement services and domestic air passenger transport.
What it means
Most of the headline move is shipping, which the ex-transport measure strips out and which tracks global freight conditions rather than Japanese demand. The domestic signal is steadier: 2.9% and flat. Hotels are the exception worth watching, since a jump from 1.6% to 9.7% is a domestic services price rather than an imported shipping cost.