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民宿 — the inn that is somebody's house
A 民宿 is a private house licensed to take guests, and the distinction from a 旅館 is money and formality rather than kindness. A 旅館 has staff, a 女将 who runs them, meals served in your room and a price to match. A 民宿 has a family: you eat what they eat, at their table, often at a fixed hour, and you may be laying out your own 布団. The owner is still called 女将 and the hospitality is often better for being unprofessional. They cluster where the tourists are not — fishing villages, ski valleys, the approaches to mountains — and they are quietly disappearing, because the people who run them are in their seventies and their children live in cities.