Holiday Inn vs ANA Crowne Plaza Japan: IHG's Two Brands Compared

Holiday Inn vs ANA Crowne Plaza Japan comes down to budget versus service level more than anything else. Holiday Inn — including the co-branded ANA Holiday Inn properties — is the value pick, from ¥4,700 a night at the Sapporo property we stayed in, with compact rooms and breakfast usually sold separately. ANA Crowne Plaza sits a tier up, from ¥6,331 across the properties we checked, with more room to move and, at some hotels, a top-floor restaurant or executive lounge. The answer flips once you factor in which brand actually operates in your city: several regional cities only have one of the two, so check availability before you compare features. Rates vary by season, and both price anchors reflect what we saw in an August 2026 check.

Why some Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza hotels in Japan carry the ANA name

Both brands belong to IHG, but only some of their Japan hotels say "ANA" on the sign, and there is a specific reason for that. In December 2006, IHG and All Nippon Airways formed a joint venture, IHG ANA Hotels Group Japan, to manage the hotel properties ANA owned or leased at the time. Those hotels were rebranded into three co-brands built for the Japan market — ANA-InterContinental, ANA-Crowne Plaza and ANA-Holiday Inn — which is why our own firsthand stay at the Holiday Inn in Sapporo's Susukino district is booked today as ANA Holiday Inn Sapporo Susukino, a 2-min walk from Exit 3 of Susukino Station on the Subway Nanboku Line, not a plain "Holiday Inn Susukino."

Properties that IHG franchises to third-party owners instead of managing through the ANA joint venture keep the plain IHG brand name. Holiday Inn Osaka Namba, a 3-min walk from Exit B20 of Namba Walk near Namba Station, is one example — no ANA prefix, because it isn't part of the original ANA-owned portfolio. Holiday Inn Express hotels in Japan follow the same pattern: neither the Osaka Midosuji nor the Sapporo Susukino Express property carries the ANA name, since Express is a newer, separately franchised line in Japan rather than a rebrand of ANA's legacy hotels. The ANA name tells you about ownership history, not hotel quality — an ANA-branded and a non-ANA hotel in the same brand tier run to the same room and service standard.

The comparison table: Holiday Inn Express, Holiday Inn and ANA Crowne Plaza

We pulled these figures directly from each hotel's own booking engine and from IHG's property pages, checked in August 2026. Nine ANA Crowne Plaza hotels we checked (Hiroshima, Chitose, Kanazawa, Kushiro, Kobe, Kumamoto, Kyoto, Naha and Osaka) start between ¥6,331 and ¥11,900 a night, against ¥4,700–6,233 at the two Holiday Inn-family hotels we checked (Sapporo Susukino and Osaka Namba) — confirming the price gap is real, not just brand perception. Rates vary by season, so treat these as a starting point rather than a locked-in price.

Express's own yen rate wasn't available through ihg.com or hotel search sites at the time of this check, so we've left that cell blank rather than publish an unreliable estimate.

Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express: the gap matters in Japan

Holiday Inn Express is not a smaller, cheaper version of Holiday Inn in Japan — it is a different product with one concrete advantage: breakfast is bundled into every rate at both Express properties we checked, with no separate charge on the bill. Regular Holiday Inn hotels, including the ANA-branded ones, don't carry that guarantee; at the Sapporo property we stayed at in May 2024, breakfast was not automatically part of the standard rate, and travelers had to pick a breakfast-inclusive plan or pay on site. Room sizes cut the other way: Holiday Inn Osaka Namba's listed 40 sqm rooms are roughly double the 18–20 sqm at the Express properties, so the trade-off isn't uniformly in Express's favor — it depends on which specific hotel and rate plan you're booking. Facilities at the Sapporo Susukino property reflect what we saw in May 2024; confirm current room and breakfast terms directly with the hotel before booking, since more than two years have passed since our stay.

Sapporo is a useful city to see the whole IHG-Japan lineup side by side: it has ANA Holiday Inn Sapporo Susukino, a separate Holiday Inn Express in the same district, a newer Holiday Inn & Suites near Odori Park, and ANA Crowne Plaza Sapporo — four IHG-family hotels across two brand tiers in one city. For the fuller lodging picture beyond IHG's own brands, our Sapporo area guide and our Susukino hotel roundup cover the neighborhood in more depth.

Is IHG One Rewards worth it on a two-week trip

IHG One Rewards is free to join and both brands compared here run on the same program, so points earned at a Holiday Inn carry over to a later ANA Crowne Plaza stay and vice versa. Membership tiers are Silver at 10 qualifying nights a year, Gold at 20, Platinum at 40 and Diamond at 70 — thresholds that a single one-to-two-week Japan trip won't clear unless every night of a long stay is booked at an IHG property. Two perks that come up often — the fourth-night-free award on a points-only stay and an annual free-night certificate — both require holding one of the IHG-co-branded credit cards (IHG One Rewards Traveler, Premier or Premier Business); free sign-up membership alone doesn't unlock either one. For a traveler without one of those cards, what a one-to-two-week trip actually gets from joining is member-only room rates and points banked toward a future stay — not fourth-night-free awards or an anniversary certificate. That's still worth the two minutes it takes to sign up; just don't expect card-tier perks on this visit.

Where to book each brand: five properties we checked

Two of these five already have confirmed walk times above: ANA Holiday Inn Sapporo Susukino and Holiday Inn Osaka Namba. A third, ANA Crowne Plaza Okayama, is a 2-min walk from the West Exit of JR Okayama Station. We couldn't confirm exit-level walk times for ANA Crowne Plaza Sapporo or ANA Crowne Plaza Kobe, so those two are listed by city only in the table below.

For the wider landscape of Japanese hotel chains beyond IHG's two brands, our guide to hotel chains in Japan covers domestic budget and mid-range groups alongside the international names.

FAQ: Holiday Inn vs ANA Crowne Plaza in Japan

Is Holiday Inn better than ANA Crowne Plaza for a first-time visit to Japan?

Neither is objectively better — Holiday Inn suits a budget-focused, no-frills stay from around ¥4,700–6,233 a night at the properties we checked, while ANA Crowne Plaza suits travelers who want more room and a full-service hotel from roughly ¥6,331 up. First-timers on a tight budget tend to be happier with Holiday Inn; those prioritizing comfort over cost tend to prefer ANA Crowne Plaza.

Which is cheaper, Holiday Inn or ANA Crowne Plaza?

Holiday Inn is cheaper at the properties we checked: ¥4,700 at Sapporo Susukino and ¥6,233 at Osaka Namba, against ¥6,331–11,900 across nine ANA Crowne Plaza hotels checked the same month. The overlap at the low end means a well-priced ANA Crowne Plaza can occasionally undercut a busy-dated Holiday Inn, so it's worth comparing both on your actual travel dates.

What does the "ANA" in ANA Crowne Plaza and ANA Holiday Inn actually mean?

It marks a hotel that came from the 2006 joint venture between IHG and All Nippon Airways, IHG ANA Hotels Group Japan, which took over hotels ANA owned or leased and rebranded them with the ANA prefix. It is not a quality indicator — franchised, non-ANA hotels in the same brand, like Holiday Inn Osaka Namba, follow identical IHG brand standards.

Is Holiday Inn Express the same as Holiday Inn in Japan?

No — Holiday Inn Express is a separate, more limited-service brand. At the two Japan properties we checked, breakfast was included in every rate, which regular Holiday Inn hotels, including ANA-branded ones, don't guarantee by default; room sizes and public spaces are also smaller at Express.