Hiring a hoist for a hotel stay in Japan

Hired hoists do go into hotel rooms

In 2023 a national rental firm hired a floor hoist to an overseas traveller for a barrier-free room in an Osaka hotel, and the hotel reported afterwards that it had been used without any problem. The same firm delivered a hoist to a Hokkaido hotel's front desk before check-in and collected it after check-out, for a traveller every other firm had turned down. A hotel serving Tokyo Disney Resort, taking a hired hoist for the first time, let a care operator bring it in and set it up from an hour before check-in; it was too big for the room door, so it came in pieces and was rebuilt in the room. A Japanese wheelchair user wrote of doing the same on a trip to Sapporo: a large rental firm delivered a hoist to his hotel and collected it at check-out, and he brought his own sling.

We found no hotel in central Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka's commercial districts or Kyoto that publishes a hoist, a hoist policy or a refusal. Each hire is agreed with the hotel, stay by stay.

Who rents them

Hoists are hired through Japan's welfare-equipment rental trade, which calls them 移動用リフト: floor hoists that roll on castors, fixed hoists, and free-standing frame hoists. Japan's long-term-care insurance pays for them, but only for people living in Japan, and never for travel, so a visitor's hire is paid in full. Renters do hire outside the insurance, at the full fee; the harder part is the paperwork. The renters that say who may sign will not sign with an overseas visitor: they want a Japanese address, and the contract and support are in Japanese. So with those renters a company in Japan holds the hire and names the traveller as the user, which their terms allow.

Most of the terms are built for homes, not hotels:

• At the large national renters, a trained equipment adviser usually brings the hoist in the renter's own van, fits it and explains it, and the contract is signed and the first payment made on the spot, often in cash. They ask the hirer, or someone acting for them, to be there at delivery and at collection. At least one firm ships a folding hoist by courier instead, with instruction online.
• At the renters built on Japan's care-insurance system, hire runs by the month: a few days costs a month, and keeping it one day over can add another.
• Many renters will not deliver to a hotel at all, the ones we have read will not hand over at an airport or a station, and those that do deliver to hotels may ask you to clear it with the hotel first.
• Most do not deliver on Sundays or public holidays, and some not on Saturdays. Allow three to five business days or more from order to delivery, and longer for models in short supply.
• A hired hoist stays at its address. Moving to another hotel means returning it and starting a new hire, so two cities mean two hires.

The common low-leg hire hoists weigh 35.5 to 49 kg in one piece, too heavy for an ordinary parcel, and the hotel-to-hotel luggage service between Tokyo and Kyoto takes only suitcases and bags.

What the hotel has to agree to

Japan's model hotel terms hold luggage that arrives before a stay only if the hotel agreed before it arrived, and hotels' house rules can forbid moving the room's furniture without permission. So everything starts with the hotel's agreement: to receive the hoist, to hold it before check-in and after check-out, and to move a sofa or a table if that is what makes space. Hotels' rules on parcels vary widely, from holding one until you arrive to holding nothing overnight, and one large Tokyo hotel's luggage page excludes anything whose three sides add up to more than 2 m, or that weighs 30 kg or more. A common hire hoist, packed, is over both.

Since 1 April 2024 Japanese businesses must make reasonable accommodation, and the health ministry's guidance for hotels lists turning a guest away because the hotel has never handled her medical equipment before as unjust discrimination. The same guidance counts moving beds and tables as reasonable, and lets a hotel ask a guest who needs a lot of care to bring a companion. In a 2023 national survey, a third of lodgings said they move beds and chairs on request.

Don't expect hotel staff to work the hoist or lift the traveller: the hotels that write about it leave that to the guest's own party. And watch the words: on a Japanese hotel page, リフト usually means a stair, pool or vehicle lift. Ask for a 移乗用リフト or a 床走行式リフト by name.

Rooms with a hoist of their own

A few lodgings own one; we found none in Tokyo or Kyoto. Big-i (国際障害者交流センター), a public centre in Sakai, near Osaka, is open to everyone and has four twins with a care hoist and one room with a ceiling hoist that runs from the bed to the toilet and the bath. Hotel Amity Maishima, on Osaka Bay, says its Western-style rooms include care hoists. The Kamenoi hotel chain lists a ceiling-hoist room at ten of its hotels, but two of them say on their own pages that they have none and others removed theirs in 2025, so ask the hotel itself, for your dates. Tell any hotel ahead that you will use its hoist, and bring your own sling anyway: the one supplied may not suit.

The bed decides

A floor hoist is a transfer machine, used within one room, and in most cases it cannot be used in a bathroom. Its base has to slide under the bed. Japan's low-leg hire hoists stand on legs of about 6 cm and need a little more than that clear underneath; other hire models need up to 12 cm. A bed on a box base leaves no gap at all, whatever its height. One traveller who hired floor hoists several times wrote that under some hotel beds the castors would not go in. A 2012 study funded by the health ministry, working from makers' catalogues, found that many business-hotel beds then had luggage space underneath, which lets a hoist come close, but that some were closed along the side, and that hotels with height-adjustable beds were rare.

We have found no hotel that publishes the gap under its beds, and gaps measured under accessible-room beds in Tokyo and Osaka run from about 6 cm to 15 cm, so two rooms in the same city can pass or fail on the bed alone. Japan's design standard asks for only 80 cm of floor beside an accessible bed. One Tokyo hoist-hire firm asks for about 1.2 m beside the bed, 10 cm or more under it, and a clear way to the bathroom.

A floor hoist is made to lift with its legs spread: the maker of a common hire model says to open them fully before lifting, and that model needs a circle 134 cm across to turn. Fully open, its legs are at most 96 cm apart inside, narrower than any hotel twin bed we have found listed, so it cannot straddle one. With the legs closed, the common hire models are 64 to 69 cm wide and should pass an 80 to 90 cm door, unless a handle or the boom sticks out. Carpet can make them hard to push, and one maker bars tatami. Hire hoists take from 100 kg to 205 kg depending on the model.

A room's size will not tell you whether the floor beside the bed is free; its floor plan usually shows where the furniture stands.

Care beds

A care bed can be hired into a hotel room too, carried up and assembled by the renter. One national renter's care beds are 85 to 91 cm wide and 181 to 209 cm long, so in a twin room one of the hotel's beds usually has to go, which the hotel must agree to. With an electric bed, move the hoist away before raising or lowering the bed, or it can catch. Some Tokyo hotels lend an electric bed for their universal rooms: Keio Plaza Hotel Tokyo offers one with back, knee and height adjustment, one per room, and its list names no hoist.

Bring the sling

Most renters sell slings rather than hire them, because a used sling changes shape and cannot be reused, and most hoist hires come without one. The hoist's maker decides which slings may hang from it: one common hire model hangs the sling on two latched hooks on a single bar, 45 cm apart, while another brand designs its slings for a four-point hanger. Before the trip, ask the renter whether the hoist's maker allows the traveller's own sling on its hanger, and settle it then, not on the night. Japan's near-miss records include a sling belt that had been hooked on properly slipping off the hanger after the person was set down and the belt went slack, so check every hook again each time the person is lowered and lifted. Size a sling like clothing, with the traveller's own doctor or therapist.

For washing and the toilet, the usual plan is to hoist onto a wheeled shower chair or commode in the bedroom, and both can be hired in Japan. Our note on barrier-free bathrooms explains why.

Bringing your own hoist

Japan runs on 100 V, at 50 Hz in Tokyo and 60 Hz in Kyoto and Osaka, so check that your hoist's charger is rated for 100 V and for both frequencies. One renter moves its lithium-battery hoists inside Japan by land only, so ask your courier how it will carry yours. A folded travel hoist is unlikely to fit a standard taxi's boot, so plan on a lift van. IATA's rules do not name a hoist, so each airline decides how to carry one: ask yours before you book.

Ask the hotel before you book

• May a rental company deliver, set up and later collect a floor hoist in the room?
• Is the bed on legs or a box base, how many centimetres are clear under its side, and can it be raised?
• How much floor is free beside the bed, and can the sofa or table be moved?
• Will the hotel hold the hoist before check-in and after check-out, weekends included?
• Is there carpet by the bed, and a socket for charging?
• If the hoist will not pass the door assembled, may it be put together in the room?