Two years and eight months have passed since the Noto Peninsula Earthquake. Of the 19 properties belonging to the Wakura Onsen Ryokan Cooperative Association, 11 have resumed operations (as of 16 July 2026, Hokkoku Shimbun). Then, on 25 August 2026, Kagaya (加賀屋) — formerly the largest lodging facility in Wakura — released the details of its new building plan and held a groundbreaking ceremony. The new building will be seven storeys with 33 rooms, an investment of approximately ¥7.7 billion, targeting an opening by the end of fiscal 2028. This article focuses on a single supply-side question — how much room stock has actually come back — and cross-references MetroEngines Research internal data with published information to pin down where Noto’s lodging supply stands in real numbers.

11 of Wakura Onsen’s 19 Properties Have Reopened — Fixing the Baseline in Real Numbers

Start with the publicly documented facts. According to the “Regional Tourism Revitalization Support Plan for Wakura Onsen Integrated with Seawall Restoration,” drawn up by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (Ports and Harbours Bureau and the Japan Tourism Agency), all 21 ryokan belonging to the Wakura Onsen Ryokan Cooperative Association at the time the earthquake struck on 1 January 2024 were forced to suspend operations. As of the plan’s most recent update, membership stood at 20 properties, and news reports as of July 2026 put it at 19. The fact that membership itself is down by two from before the earthquake is worth holding on to when discussing supply.

Of those 19, Shirasagi-no-Yu Noto Kaishu resumed operations on 16 July 2026, bringing the reopened total to 11 (NHK, Hokkoku Shimbun). The property is operated by Kyoritsu Maintenance and all 98 of its rooms have natural hot-spring open-air baths; its ground-floor lobby hosts a photographic exhibition run in partnership with the Ishikawa Prefecture “Noto Peninsula Earthquake Archive.” Beyond the simple property count, the return of a facility of this room scale matters for the onsen district’s capacity to receive guests.

A week earlier, on 9 July, the long-established Okudaya restarted with four guest rooms — the first property in post-earthquake Wakura to reopen via a full rebuild (Hokkoku Shimbun, 3 July 2026). It deliberately operates without an in-house restaurant or shop, so that guests circulate among the shops of the onsen town instead; president Kazuhiro Okuda has been quoted as saying he wants “to raise the appeal of the whole town rather than keeping everything inside the ryokan.” The figure of 11 therefore contains, simultaneously, a 98-room large-format ryokan and a four-room whole-property rental. That is Wakura in 2026.

OTA-Listed Properties Across the Six Noto Municipalities — 150 to 59 to 79

Cooperative membership counts describe Wakura Onsen alone. Across the Noto Peninsula as a whole, how many lodgings can actually be booked online again? Using the “six Noto municipalities” (Nanao, Wajima, Suzu, Shika, Anamizu and Noto Town) — the unit the Japan Tourism Agency itself uses when explaining Wakura Onsen’s position — we tracked MetroEngines Research OTA-listed property counts month by month.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (six Noto municipalities combined, OTA-listed property count by month)

In December 2023, immediately before the earthquake, the six municipalities had 150 OTA-listed properties. The count fell in stages after the earthquake, bottoming out at 59 in November 2024 — a contraction to 39.3% of the pre-earthquake level. A gradual recovery has followed, reaching 79 as of August 2026: 52.7% of the pre-earthquake level, and +20 properties (+33.9%) off the bottom.

The shape of that recovery has a distinctive character. The sharp decline was concentrated between April and August 2024 (106 to 64 properties), coinciding with the period when decisions on emergency repairs and publicly funded demolition were being settled and long-term closures became fixed. The recovery, by contrast, has accumulated steadily at one to two properties a month since spring 2025 — not a dramatic rebound but an incremental return, one repaired property at a time. In the seven months since the start of 2026 the count is up 10 (69 to 79), so the recent pace has picked up somewhat.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (OTA-listed property counts by municipality over time)

Broken down by municipality, the speed of recovery varies widely.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team. Trough months are minimum values within the October 2023 – August 2026 observation window

While Nanao and Shika have recovered to around 70%, Wajima, Suzu and Noto Town at the tip of the peninsula remain at 20–30%. That gap reflects not only differences in recovery speed but also a structural issue of small denominators. Suzu had only 16 properties even before the earthquake, so a change of one moves its ratio substantially. Wajima’s rise from 2 properties in March 2026 to 6 in August is +4 in absolute terms, but it means the listed count tripled. This is an area where small changes in the numbers need to be read carefully. It is also worth noting that the speed at which supply returns and the speed at which demand returns do not necessarily coincide — in Ishikawa and Kumamoto, the order in which domestic and inbound guests came back was reversed relative to one another.

One further caveat: these counts are OTA-listing-based. A lodging that continues to house reconstruction workers will not appear here unless it also lists inventory for general guests. Conversely, a property that has reopened with only part of its rooms in service still counts as one property. Yukemuri-no-Yado Bibanso and Hotel Kaibo, both in Table 4 below, are explicitly noted in Japan Tourism Agency publications as having reopened with “only some guest rooms.” Property counts and room counts are different metrics.

About 7% of Properties, About 50% of Guest Nights — Wakura’s Role as the Hub

There is a clear reason why Wakura Onsen draws so much attention in any discussion of Noto’s recovery. The Japan Tourism Agency support plan describes its position as follows: “In terms of the number of lodging facilities, ‘Wakura Onsen’ accounts for only about 7% of the six Noto Peninsula municipalities (Nanao, Wajima, Suzu, Shika, Anamizu and Noto Town) with its 20 ryokan (members of the Wakura Onsen Ryokan Cooperative Association). However, it accounts for more than 50% in terms of ryokan guest capacity and the share of lodging facilities with 100 or more guest rooms, and roughly 50% of total guest nights — making it the hub of tourism on the Noto Peninsula.”

Seven percent of properties, 50% of guest nights. That asymmetry stems from Wakura Onsen’s concentration of large ryokan with more than 100 rooms. The property-count-based recovery rate seen in the previous section — 79 properties across the six municipalities, 52.7% of pre-earthquake — does not equal the recovery rate of guest-night capacity. Even if half the properties return, the potential guest-night total will not reach half unless the large ryokan come back. Put the other way, every large Wakura ryokan that returns moves the whole region’s receiving capacity faster than the property count implies. That is what the 98-room reopening of Noto Kaishu in July signifies.

Rebuilding Kagaya — 233 Rooms Become 33, at a Cost of Approximately ¥7.7 Billion

Then on 25 August 2026 came the details of the plan that will move Wakura Onsen’s room stock more than any other. That day, Kagaya (president Takatsugu Watanabe) held a groundbreaking ceremony on the former site of the Kagaya annex Matsunomidori and released its plan for a new building (Kanko Keizai Shimbun, Hokkoku Shimbun, Nihon Keizai Shimbun).

Source: Hokkoku Shimbun (25 August 2026), Nihon Keizai Shimbun (25 August 2026), Kanko Keizai Shimbun (25 August 2026); compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team

It is worth laying the plan’s evolution out chronologically. Under the first plan, from December 2024, a new building of five storeys with roughly 50 guest rooms and about 8,600 m² of gross floor area was to be built on company-owned coastal land about 550 m west of the existing Kagaya, opening in winter 2026 (Kanko Keizai Shimbun, Tokyo Shimbun, Nikkei xTECH). The second plan, in August 2025, moved the site to the former Matsunomidori plot in the centre of the onsen district, revised the room count to roughly 40, and pushed the opening to the end of fiscal 2027. Now, in August 2026, the final specification has settled at 33 rooms, approximately ¥7.7 billion, and an opening at the end of fiscal 2028. Site, scale and timing have all been revised over these 20 months.

The change in room count is what matters here. According to Nikkei xTECH, the pre-earthquake Kagaya comprised four buildings with 233 rooms in total. The August 2025 announcement confirmed the demolition of all four (Setsugekka, Noto Shotei, Noto Kyakuden and Noto Honjin). Two hundred and thirty-three rooms become 33 — roughly one-seventh.

Source: Nikkei xTECH (10 January 2025), Kanko Keizai Shimbun (12 August 2025), Hokkoku Shimbun (25 August 2026); compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team. Ae-no-Kaze plans to demolish the old Nishi-no-Kaze wing and reopen centred on the Higashi-no-Kaze guest rooms

Across the group’s three properties, 397 rooms become approximately 153. Wakura Onsen’s largest group is restructuring to about 38.5% of its former scale on a room-count basis. This reads less as contraction than as a shift toward a design that raises revenue density per unit of investment.

¥233 Million per Room — What Fewer Rooms at Higher Rates Means for the Investment Structure

Let us work out the density of the investment from the published figures. Dividing approximately ¥7.7 billion by 33 rooms gives roughly ¥233 million of investment per guest room. The gross floor area of 8,035 m² is about 2,431 tsubo, so the cost per tsubo of gross floor area is approximately ¥3.17 million.

That per-tsubo figure sits at the lower end of 2025 construction-cost benchmarks (segment-level guides derived from the MLIT Statistical Survey on Building Construction Starts put the luxury band at roughly ¥3.1–3.5 million per tsubo). In other words, the unit construction cost itself is reasonable for a new build of this grade. Per-room investment exceeds ¥200 million not because the cost per tsubo is exceptional, but because gross floor area per guest room, at 243 m², is unusually generous. Given that limited-service hotels typically run 30–40 m² of gross floor area per room, this is six to eight times that. The ryokan investment structure — allocating heavy floor area to communal baths, dining and public spaces — shows up directly in the numbers.

Making an investment of this size work at a scale of 33 rooms and a maximum of 110 guests necessarily places the per-room rate on a different plane from the former 233-room configuration. That means a new layer is being added to Wakura Onsen’s price map. As discussed below, Nanao’s current estimated settled ADR sits below ¥10,000. On top of that, a product in an entirely different rate band arrives at the end of fiscal 2028. It will unquestionably push the area’s average rate upward, and for mid-sized ryokan nearby there is a further knock-on benefit: a new ceiling above them makes it easier to redesign their own price ranges.

The new Kagaya building also moves its location into the centre of the onsen district — a change from the coastal site in the first plan (about 550 m west of the existing Kagaya) to the former Matsunomidori plot. Kanko Keizai Shimbun reported the reason as being “consideration for generating vibrancy in the onsen district.” Placing a lodging facility at the centre rather than the periphery of the onsen town means guest circulation is designed to pass through the shopping street. That aligns with Okudaya’s concept, described above, of forgoing an in-house restaurant so that guests go out into the town’s shops. Across Wakura as a whole, the supply side’s design philosophy is shifting from “everything within the ryokan” to “circulation through the town.”

The Wakura Onsen Reopening and Rebuilding Pipeline

To answer the question “when does Wakura come back?”, here is a list of every timeline published so far. The base is the annex to the Japan Tourism Agency support plan (as of 15 December 2025), updated with subsequently reported changes.

Source: Japan Tourism Agency, “Regional Tourism Revitalization Support Plan for Wakura Onsen Integrated with Seawall Restoration,” annex (as of 15 December 2025); Hokkoku Shimbun; NHK; Kanko Keizai Shimbun; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team. Always check each property’s official announcements for its current operating status

The timeline this list implies is clear. Small and mid-sized properties return in sequence from 2026 through the first half of 2027, while the reopening of large ryokan is concentrated in the second half of FY2027 through FY2028. Tadaya president Kentaro Tada told Hokkoku Shimbun that materials prices are running at roughly double the levels seen at the time of the Kumamoto earthquake, and that although a new wing had initially been under consideration, the surge in construction costs led the company to limit the work to renovating existing buildings. The level of construction costs is dictating the very form the rebuilding takes.

What every property has in common is a plan to reduce room capacity relative to before the earthquake. Tadaya at roughly half; Ae-no-Kaze from 115 rooms to about 80; Niji-to-Umi from 49 to about 40; Kagaya from 233 to 33. Wakura Onsen as a whole is steering toward shrinking total room count while raising the value added per room.

Where Nanao’s Rate Level Sits Now — Compared with Kanazawa and Kaga

So with supply at half strength, where have Nanao’s lodging rates settled? Using MetroEngines Research estimated settled ADR, we place Nanao alongside Kanazawa and Kaga (home to the Yamanaka, Yamashiro and Katayamazu onsen and Ishikawa’s largest onsen market).

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team (estimated settled ADR, tax-exclusive equivalent)

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team. All year-on-year comparisons are between finalised values

Nanao’s 12-month average of roughly ¥9,500 is 92% of Kanazawa’s (roughly ¥10,300) and just 48% of Kaga’s (roughly ¥20,000) — less than half the level of Ishikawa’s flagship onsen market.

A crucial caveat on how to read this: the gap must not be interpreted as “Wakura Onsen’s lodgings are discounting.” Nanao’s pre-earthquake estimated settled ADR was ¥16,348 as of December 2023 (N=35). The most recent figure, for July 2026, is ¥9,144 (N=19). The number of properties in the sample has almost halved, from 35 to 19, and those that suspended operations in the interim were predominantly large onsen ryokan with high room counts. High-rate properties have dropped out of the sample and the weight of small lodgings and business-oriented hotels has risen, which is what has pulled the area median down. What we are seeing is a change in the composition of the sample, not a change in pricing policy.

Year-on-year movement confirms that reading. Nanao’s July 2026 was up 4.5% year on year, outperforming both Kanazawa (−4.0%) and Kaga (−15.6%). Limited to the properties currently trading, rates are in fact holding firm. What is low is the level, not the momentum.

Where Nanao’s rate level heads next is therefore governed almost entirely by the supply-side rebuilding schedule. From the second half of FY2027 through FY2028, Taikanso, Tadaya, Ae-no-Kaze and the new Kagaya — all in the higher rate band — return in sequence. At that point the sample composition shifts back toward the top of the range, and it is natural to expect Nanao’s area ADR to move up as a level. Kaga’s ¥20,000 is not out of reach for Nanao; it is close to where Nanao itself sat before the earthquake. For the wider picture of Hokuriku’s bifurcation — Wakura rebuilding while areas such as Tsuruga trade strongly — our analysis of Noto reconstruction and hotel investment digs into the background.

How Far Does Supply Come Back? Three Scenarios Drawn from the Observed Pace

Everything up to this point is actual data. Finally, we extend the observed range forward to see what it implies. Read this not as a forecast but as an indication of range, extrapolated from the pace we have actually observed.

For OTA-listed properties across the six Noto municipalities, ten 12-month rolling windows are available from the November 2024 trough onward. The monthly rate of return across those windows ranges from a minimum of 0.17 properties (November 2024 → November 2025) through a median of 0.75 to a maximum of 1.17 (July 2025 → July 2026). Recovery has not been steady; it has proceeded within a spread of nearly sevenfold. We add each of those three paces to the 79 properties recorded in August 2026.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team. Figures in parentheses are relative to the pre-earthquake level (150 properties in December 2023). This is a linear-addition calculation, not a forecast

Even in the mid scenario, the end of FY2028 lands just under 70% of the pre-earthquake level. In the high scenario — the fastest pace of the past 12 months sustained for two and a half years — it is 77%. Given that the rebuilding pipeline in Table 4 is concentrated in the second half of FY2027 and FY2028, the mid-to-high band is the realistic range; but either way, a return to the pre-earthquake property count is not a picture that can be drawn within this decade. Noto’s lodging supply will settle at a smaller equilibrium than before the earthquake.

Next, the rate side. As shown in the previous section, Nanao’s area ADR is low because of sample composition rather than pricing policy. The recovery in rates therefore tracks, almost one for one, how many high-rate properties return to the sample. Connecting two actual data points — today (July 2026, N=19, ¥9,144) and pre-earthquake (December 2023, N=35, ¥16,348) — we set out a guide in which only the recovery of the sample is varied.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team. The endpoints ¥9,144 and ¥16,348 are actual values; the four intermediate rows are guide values by linear interpolation

A limitation should be stated here. Area ADR is a median, so it does not respond linearly to changes in sample composition; where in the rate distribution properties return will swing the median considerably even at the same property count. Table 7 gives direction and order of magnitude, not a precise forecast. It is still worth holding on to, because the correspondence it sets out — “Nanao’s ADR reaches the low ¥10,000s once about ten properties return, and the ¥16,000 range once the pre-earthquake sample is restored” — gives currently trading properties a coordinate system for deciding where to place their own price range. Kaga’s ¥20,002 lies beyond that.

Overlay the two tables and the outline of Wakura and Noto in 2026 emerges. Property counts plateau just under 70% of the pre-earthquake level, while rates retain room to return to pre-earthquake levels. Recovery comes not through volume but through rate. Kagaya’s choice of 233 rooms to 33, which this article has followed from the outset, is the sharpest single embodiment of that pattern.

Noto in 2026 from the Supply Side — Three Perspectives

First, the recovery in property counts and the recovery in receiving capacity have to be tracked separately. OTA-listed properties across the six Noto municipalities have returned to 52.7% of the pre-earthquake level, but given that Wakura Onsen accounts for roughly 50% of guest nights, the recovery in guest-night capacity lags that figure. Conversely, capacity grows non-linearly with every large ryokan that returns. July 2026’s 98-room reopening, and Ae-no-Kaze’s approximately 80 rooms and the new Kagaya’s 33 in FY2028, are the steps in that progression.

Second, Wakura Onsen’s total room count is designed not to return to pre-earthquake levels. The three Kagaya Group properties go from 397 rooms to approximately 153, and Tadaya rebuilds at roughly half its former size. This means Noto’s lodging market is shifting its centre of gravity from volume to rate. If demand returns while area-wide room supply remains constrained, upward pressure builds on both occupancy and rate. As for how demand is returning — specifically, when bookings for Wakura are actually landing — our benchmark of Wakura Onsen’s summer 2026 booking pace against other onsen destinations examines it side by side with comparable markets. For the 11 properties still trading, this is a phase that affords time to redesign their price bands and target segments ahead of 2027–2028.

Third, the level of construction costs is determining the very form of the rebuilding. Tadaya’s decision to abandon a new wing in favour of renovating existing buildings, and the two successive delays to Kagaya’s opening date, are both bound up with rising materials prices. The new Kagaya building’s cost of approximately ¥3.17 million per tsubo of gross floor area shows exactly the conditions facing new high-value ryokan construction as of 2026. Read the other way, it also means new supply is structurally suppressed — which works in favour of operators holding existing stock by easing the competitive environment.

Wakura Onsen stands at 11 of 19 properties reopened. Most of the remainder have published reopening targets, and the largest of them broke ground on 25 August 2026. The supply side’s clock is certainly moving forward.

Related Reading

• Wakura Onsen Summer 2026 Booking Pace vs. Other Onsen Destinations, and the ROI of Seawall Restoration Policy — Wakura viewed from the demand side (how bookings are landing)
• How Much Reconstruction Can Kumamoto’s Lodging Stock Support — the 2016 Record and a Price Map of 11,000 Business-Segment Rooms
• Snow Crab Season Opens 6 November and Lodging Rates Rise 3.2x — November–January Data for Six Sea of Japan Prefectures by Port Town
• Wakura Onsen and Noto Reconstruction: The Latest in Hotel Investment — Hokuriku’s Split Between a Strong Tsuruga and a Rebuilding Noto
• Sixteen Months After the Noto Peninsula Earthquake: Wakura Onsen and Wajima’s Recovery Phase and Summer 2026 Booking Trends
• Ishikawa ADR: City Hotels +3.6%, Business Hotels −1.3% — Reading the Price-Tier Gap That Opened in H1 2026