ROCK & STEAM Brings Private Saunas to Beppu’s Hot-Spring Quarter on December 18
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The 21-room condo-hotel in Kannawa gives every room a hot-spring tub and three suites a private sauna: a tatami tea room, a scented forest room and a rock room with a hot-spring foot bath.
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ROCK & STEAM by SEKIYA RESORT, a 21-room art hotel in the Kannawa hot-spring district of Beppu, Japan, opens December 18. Three of its rooms come with a private sauna. The Beppu operator announced the date on October 21, and bookings opened October 16 on the hotel’s website, Rakuten Travel and Jalan.
The company calls the concept “modern tōji.” Tōji is the old Japanese custom of staying at a hot spring for days or weeks to recover. The hotel’s FAQ says it aims to give guests that recovery in a short stay, through hot springs, local food and herbs. Every room has its own tub of hot-spring water straight from the source, and the release says each tub is carved out of rock.
ROCK & STEAM at a glance
- Where Kannawa, Beppu, Ōita Prefecture, on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu
- Opens December 18, 2026
- Hotel rooms twenty-one, all with an in-room hot-spring tub; three Sauna Suites of about 650 square feet (60 m²) each
- Sauna Suite rate ¥45,350 to ¥82,750 (about $287 to $524) per person for two, room only, tax included
- Cold water no cold bath; a rain shower and lounge chairs instead
- Format a condo-hotel; buyers own rooms, and the hotel rents them out when owners aren’t using them
Three Sauna Suites, three different hot rooms
Only the three Sauna Suites have saunas, and they’re private to the guests in those rooms. Each has a different theme, according to a July 2025 release on the saunas:
- Tea room: modeled on a Japanese tea room, with tatami on the floor. Guests sit on the mats.
- Forest: water scented with aroma oil is sprinkled on the wood to fill the room with its smell.
- Rock: styled after Beppu’s stone, with a foot bath fed by Beppu hot-spring water. The company describes the heat as far-infrared warmth given off by the rock, and calls this the first in-room sauna with a hot-spring foot bath. It has not offered evidence for that claim.
The hotel has not published sauna temperatures or a heater make, and its rendering of the rock room shows a cylindrical heater filled with stones. There’s no cold plunge. The FAQ says the suites have a rain shower and lounge chairs for cooling down instead. Guests can’t pick a sauna: the booking listings sell the Sauna Suite as one room type, with no choice of room.
The suites cost about $575 to $1,050 a night for two
Rakuten Travel lists the Sauna Suite at ¥45,350 to ¥82,750 per person for two sharing, room only, tax included, which works out to about $575 to $1,050 a night for the room. With breakfast and dinner, the rate is ¥60,750 to ¥99,250 per person. A Superior Twin, without a sauna, starts at ¥30,500 (about $193) per person. Stays are capped at two nights per booking. Dollar figures use about 158 yen to the dollar, the October 21 rate.
Guests also get a free-flow lounge, a gym and two restaurants: Namiji, a robatayaki grill, and Tetsu, a teppanyaki counter that opens later. Breakfast includes food steamed over Beppu’s hot-spring vents.
Owners buy the rooms, and guests rent them
ROCK & STEAM is a condo-hotel. It is the first property in SEKIYA RESORT’s “100-Year Villa” line, according to the hotel’s site, which tells buyers they get private stays and a payback when their room is rented. The company began selling the first rooms on June 6, 2026, per a June release, and calls the format rare in Kyushu.
SEKIYA RESORT runs three other Beppu inns: Bettei Haruki, Terrace Midobaru and GALLERIA MIDOBARU. The company was founded in 1965, and it says its lodging business goes back more than 120 years.
Art fills the rest of the building
The hotel bills itself as “a museum you can stay in.” The Korean-American artist Soo Sunny Park is making a new work for the building. Photographer Naoki Ishikawa will show work that responds to Kannawa, and a studio will host regular shows by young artists. No architect has been named. The renderings show a terraced building stepping down the slope.
A public steam bath is a four-minute walk away
Beppu has 2,831 working hot-spring sources, which put out about 26,900 gallons a minute, according to Ōita Prefecture’s figures for the end of fiscal 2024. The hotel is a four-minute walk from Kannawa Mushiyu, a public herb steam bath, and six minutes from Hyotan Onsen.
Our count of government records shows licensed sauna baths in Japan on course to outnumber sento, the traditional neighborhood baths, by March 2027. Hotels elsewhere are putting saunas in the rooms too, among them Lapland Hotels Bulevardi in Helsinki, which fitted 102 private saunas into a converted building.
