More than two years have passed since the Hokuriku Shinkansen was extended to Tsuruga. Fukui’s accommodation market tends to be discussed under the single blanket phrase “the Shinkansen effect,” but when MetroEngines Research data is broken down to the municipal level, three demand cores with completely different characteristics become visible, coexisting within the same prefecture: Fukui City, which carries business demand and station-front Shinkansen demand; Awara City, a long-established cluster of hot spring ryokan; and Katsuyama City, which depends on a single tourism core — the Dinosaur Museum. This article tracks the estimated settled ADR hierarchy of these three clusters on a monthly basis and quantifies where the price-band whitespace remains.

Executive Summary — A 2.5x Price Hierarchy Within One Prefecture

According to MetroEngines Research data, average estimated settled ADR over the trailing 12 months (July 2025 to June 2026) was approximately ¥8,600 in Fukui City, approximately ¥21,600 in Awara City, and approximately ¥18,600 in Katsuyama City. Within the same prefecture, Awara City runs roughly 2.5 times Fukui City and Katsuyama City roughly 2.2 times, forming a clear price hierarchy (see also our four-city ADR comparison of Fukui, Tsuruga, Komatsu and Kanazawa). Fukui Prefecture’s overall estimated settled ADR is approximately ¥11,600 — and looking only at that single prefectural figure hides the fact that three markets of genuinely different character are mixed together.

Growth has been equally uneven. Compared with the 2023 average — the year before the Hokuriku Shinkansen extension to Tsuruga (March 16, 2024) — Fukui City clearly stepped up by 12.1%, while Awara City rose only 1.4%, essentially flat. The benefit of Shinkansen transport infrastructure is working on room rates in front of the station, but it is not reaching rates in hot spring districts away from the station directly. This is precisely why different levers are required in different areas.

Monthly ADR Hierarchy Across the Three Clusters — Entirely Different Seasonal Shapes

* For 2026, only the confirmed basis for January–June is shown. July onward is an estimate based on currently published rate levels and is excluded from seasonal comparison.

Placing the two charts side by side reveals that the shape of seasonality is entirely different. Apart from a single peak in August, Fukui City is nearly flat throughout the year, with monthly swings contained within roughly ¥7,700 to ¥9,900. This is a textbook business-demand rate profile, and it suggests a structure in which weekday occupancy forms the foundation of price formation.

Awara City, by contrast, builds a clear peak from December through February. This is a seasonal structure in which the winter food demand common to Hokuriku hot spring districts (centered on Echizen crab) pushes rates up: estimated settled ADR in December 2025 reached approximately ¥28,600, roughly 1.6 times the approximately ¥17,900 recorded in June of the same year. Rather than smoothing occupancy across the year, this is the ryokan model of concentrating rate into specific seasons to generate revenue — and it shows up directly in the price data.

Viewed by annual average, the ranking of the hierarchy itself has not moved across the four years. Awara City at the top, Katsuyama City in the middle and Fukui City at the bottom is a fixed structure; what changes is the rate of growth within each tier. Most notable is Fukui City’s consistent climb, stepping up roughly 12% from approximately ¥7,700 in 2023 to approximately ¥8,600 over the trailing 12 months.

In Front of Fukui Station — Shinkansen Demand Riding on a Business Base

What underpins accommodation demand in front of Fukui Station is, first and foremost, a thick business base. Within a 1 km radius there are 2,325 establishments and 20,809 employees, of whom 5,773 (27.7%) are office-based. This is a standard composition for the central district of a prefectural capital, and this segment generates stable weekday occupancy. What the Shinkansen extension added was mixed tourism and business-travel demand riding on top of that existing business demand.

Usage of the Shinkansen at Fukui Station averages 3,600 passengers per day (first year after the extension), which ranks second among the prefecture’s four stations behind Tsuruga Station’s 7,700. On the other hand, passengers on the Kanazawa–Fukui section reached 8.161 million per year, up 25% versus the previous limited express service. In other words, Fukui Station functions not as a “terminus with mass inflow” but as a “relay hub with thicker traffic to and from the Kansai and Hokuriku regions.” That gradual increase in demand offers a consistent explanation for why room rates stepped up moderately, but steadily, by 12.1%.

Plotting room count on the horizontal axis and estimated settled ADR on the vertical axis makes the structure of the station-front market immediately clear. Sixteen properties with 1,805 rooms are packed into the ¥5,000–¥10,000 band, accounting for 65.7% of the total 2,746 rooms. Next comes the ¥10,000–¥14,000 band with 4 properties and 672 rooms (24.5%). And in the band above ¥14,000 there are only 2 properties and 269 rooms (9.8%).

The implication of this distribution is unambiguous. The area in front of Fukui Station is a market where “select-service properties around ¥8,000 form a thick layer, while above ¥14,000 there are effectively only two properties.” Moreover, one of those two has just 17 rooms, so the 100-room-class upper-mid product is effectively limited to a single property. For the station front of a prefectural capital, the upper price band is still thin — and that is where headroom remains.

The upper band is composed of one foreign-affiliated brand plus upper-tier select-service formats that use large hot spring baths as their differentiator. All of them earn high review scores, so demand that supports rates of ¥13,000–¥20,000 in front of the station clearly exists. The issue is not whether demand exists, but the depth of choice available.

Awara Onsen — A Wide Hot Spring Band, With Room to Add Depth in the Middle

Awara City’s estimated settled ADR averages ¥21,600 over the trailing 12 months, roughly 2.5 times that of Fukui City. But that median merely marks the center of an extremely wide price distribution. Broken down by property, the gap between the top and the bottom exceeds twelve times.

What stands out is that all eight of the top properties secure an overall review score of 4.3 or higher. From a 24-room, high-rate format (¥94,100) to a 170-room large ryokan (¥38,400), high rates and high ratings coexist regardless of scale. Awara Onsen is “a market where the product strength to command high rates has already been proven,” and in that respect its starting conditions differ from those in front of Fukui Station.

On the other hand, the middle of the distribution — specifically the ¥20,000–¥30,000 band — has few properties. Eight properties line up in the upper band (above ¥30,000) and several exist below ¥20,000, yet the price band in between is thin. Nationally, this band corresponds to the volume zone of leisure demand: roughly ¥20,000 per person with two meals included. Behind Awara Onsen’s failure to capture the Shinkansen benefit in its rates (+1.4% versus 2023), one reading is that there is room to expand the product line that reaches a demand segment different from the station front.

Katsuyama — Accommodation Supply Is Only Now Catching Up With a 1.3 Million-Visitor Tourism Core

Katsuyama City’s demand structure differs fundamentally from the other two clusters. A single tourist facility — the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum — defines almost all of its demand. The museum recorded 1,298,975 visitors in fiscal 2025, up 2.7% from 1,264,541 in the previous fiscal year and setting a record high for the second consecutive year. Looking at web ticket sales by region, the Kansai region accounts for 29.9% and the Kanto region 23.2%, meaning out-of-prefecture, long-distance visitors make up the majority.

Against a tourism core capable of drawing 1.3 million visitors a year, surrounding accommodation supply is limited. Within the scope MetroEngines Research covers, Katsuyama City has only 4–5 properties per month within the estimated settled ADR calculation scope. Even widening the radius to 12 km from the Dinosaur Museum, there are 47 registrations in the property master, but most are small ryokan and pensions with fewer than 10 rooms.

What this distribution shows is a structure in which, apart from one 100-room-class hotel, virtually everything is a small property of around 10 rooms. Mid to upper-mid band products that families visiting from Kansai and Kanto could book as a set with the museum have simply not existed in this market. Relative to an annual draw of 1.3 million visitors, the capacity to receive them is only now beginning to gain depth.

Supply Pipeline — What the Data Shows, and What Press Reports Must Supplement

On an OTA listing-confirmed basis, Fukui Prefecture recorded 13 openings with 358 rooms in 2023, 19 openings with 430 rooms in 2024, 19 openings with 388 rooms in 2025, and 9 openings with 321 rooms confirmed so far in 2026. Courtyard by Marriott Fukui (252 rooms), which opened in 2024, launched on March 15 — the day before the Shinkansen extension — and is a representative example of supply that priced in the extension.

Here we should make the limits of the data explicit. When we queried our building-plan data (based on building confirmation applications under MLIT’s “Building Construction Dynamics Statistics Survey”) for Fukui Prefecture, a search with no lower bound on room count and a cap of 200 records returned zero hits. Confirmation applications are normally filed one to two years before opening, so future years are structurally undercounted — but even allowing for that, nothing has yet surfaced on the official statistics side. The pipeline below is therefore limited to projects confirmable through press reporting.

The direction these two projects indicate is clear. In front of Fukui Station, an upper-band product of approximately 170 rooms is expected to be added, equivalent to roughly a 63% increase over the current above-¥14,000 band within 2 km (2 properties, 269 rooms). Note that “Candeo Hotels Fukui,” initially reported as “11 stories, approximately 120 rooms,” refers to the operating brand of this Minamidori district redevelopment hotel tower (revised to 15 stories and approximately 170 rooms) and is not a separate project. Adding up press-stage information at face value is a textbook way to overestimate supply; pipelines must be deduplicated on an operator and location basis. In Katsuyama, a 100-room resort will rise inside the Dinosaur Forest Park, creating capacity in the mid to upper-mid band that has been absent until now. The market is moving to fill its own whitespace.

Price-Band Whitespace Map — The Gaps Differ Across the Three Clusters

What the three clusters share is a structure of “a thin upper band sitting on top of a dense band.” But the location and character of the whitespace differ. The gap in front of Fukui Station is about capturing higher value from business demand (an upward shift in the rates business travelers pay), while Katsuyama’s gap is about capturing the volume zone of leisure demand. For Awara Onsen, the upper band is already thickly formed; there is instead room to expand the product line in the ¥20,000–¥30,000 mid band.

Backing Out Feasibility — Three Simplified Scenarios

Let us work backward from published benchmarks to test whether the upper-mid whitespace “stands up as an investment target.” Construction costs are presented in two stages.

Stage 1 (2025 actuals basis): Per-tsubo construction cost is ¥2.405 million for steel-frame (S) construction and ¥2.026 million for reinforced concrete (RC) construction (archi-book 2025 edition compilation).

Stage 2 (pricing in inflation during the construction period): Turner & Townsend forecasts construction cost inflation of +5.3% in 2026 and +5.0% in 2027. Assuming an opening around 2027, it is reasonable to allow for roughly +5% of upward drift by the midpoint of construction. In the estimates below, Stage 2 (post-inflation) figures are treated as the primary numbers.

The select-service upper model (Scenario A) delivers a GOP yield of 9.3% and a payback period of 10.7 years. It holds room size down to compress construction costs while setting ADR at the midpoint of the current station-front upper band (¥13,700–¥20,400). The full-service upper-mid model (Scenario B) has a gross floor area more than 30% larger, so its yield settles at 6.4% — but this configuration is easier to make work when land costs can be apportioned as part of a mixed-use complex, as in the Fukui Station Minamidori district redevelopment.

Scenario C, repositioning an existing hot spring ryokan into the upper band, requires no land acquisition and keeps renovation costs to around ¥1.2 million per tsubo, giving the highest investment efficiency at an 11.4% yield. In Awara Onsen, the top eight properties already combine ADRs above ¥30,000 with review scores of 4.3 or higher, proving that this level is accepted by the market. There is ample basis for lifting properties up from the mid band.

Scenario A holds at 7.8% even in the combined case where ADR falls 10% and occupancy drops 5 points. For a select-service property in a regional city, that is a reasonable level of resilience. Scenario B, by contrast, falls to 5.3% in the combined case, so structuring it as part of a redevelopment project is more realistic than standalone development.

Viewed on two axes, Scenario A only falls into the 6% range at an ADR of ¥15,000 combined with occupancy of 70% or below — a combination that sits beneath the floor of the current station-front upper band (¥13,700–¥20,400). Conversely, an ADR of ¥19,500 with 80% occupancy would exceed 10%. The structure secures around 8% even if either ADR or occupancy misses plan, provided the other holds at its assumed level, and this breadth of resilience is the basis for recommending the select-service scenario.

Assumptions and Caveats

Conclusion

Telling the story of Fukui’s accommodation market through the single narrative of “the Shinkansen effect” misses the changes actually taking place. Broken down to the municipal level, the data reveals a 2.5x price hierarchy coexisting across Fukui City (¥8,600), Katsuyama City (¥18,600) and Awara City (¥21,600) — each with different sources of demand, different seasonality and different growth rates.

From an investment standpoint, the clearest opening is the ¥14,000–¥25,000 band in front of Fukui Station. Today that band holds only 2 properties and 269 rooms, just 9.8% of total rooms. Even with the roughly 170-room redevelopment hotel tower added in 2027, the band is projected to reach only about 440 rooms (+63%). Modeled as a select-service upper product, it delivers a 9.3% GOP yield even after pricing in construction cost inflation, and secures 7.8% in the combined case of a 10% ADR shortfall and a 5-point occupancy shortfall.

In Katsuyama, a 100-room resort will launch in autumn 2027 against a tourism core drawing 1.3 million visitors a year, creating a mid to upper-mid band that has not existed before. In Awara Onsen, the product strength of the upper band is already proven, and thickening the mid-band product line leaves room to capture a demand segment different from the station front. The three clusters each carry a different whitespace, and each awaits a different move.

Related Reading

• Hokuriku Shinkansen Year 3: Fukui, Tsuruga, Komatsu & Kanazawa ADR Compared