Staying Power

Mori Trust’s Miwako Date gears her property firm’s hotel upgrades to Japan’s tourism push.

- James Simms

Ascion of the nearly 70-year-old real estate giant founded by the Mori family is trying to freshen up the staid building-and-hotel sector in Japan.

Miwako Date (pronounced DAH-tay), the 47-year-old president of Mori Trust, is a rarity in the conservative, male-dominated business. More unusually, she beat out two brothers, no longer at the firm founded by her grandfather, for the company’s top job—in a country and region where the eldest son is the traditional choice.

While Japan’s real estate sector doesn’t lag behind other industrial nations in many aspects, parts of it are in a bit of a time warp. Nowhere is that more clear than in luxury hotels. Often with mid century designs and dark hushed spaces with indifferent interiors, the nation’s top hotels—not with standing Japan’s impeccable, high end ryokan inns—fall short of those in New York, London, Paris or Hong Kong in service and design.

For Date, who took the hotel portfolio in 2008 before becoming president in 2016, the emphasis on luxury lodging, including listing a hotel real estate investment trust last year, is part of a drive to increase the firm’s revenue and profitability. Of Mori Trust’s nearly $1.5 billion in revenue in the fiscal year through March 2018, one fifth came from hotels and the rest mainly from office and condo development, leasing and sales. The latter pillars are self-sustaining, yet growth is slow because of a mature economy and shrinking population.

Tourism, however, is still a rapidly developing market, especially as Japan pushes to expand inbound travelers from 2017’s nearly 29 million to 40 million when Tokyo hosts the 2020 Summer Olympics. Visitors have more than doubled in the past three years.

Date, who earned a graduate degree from elite Keio University, where she studied urban planning, spoke with Forbes Asia. (The interview has been edited.)