According to the section-by-section income and expenditure for Q1 FY2026 (April–June) that JR Hokkaido released on October 7, the eight “yellow” sections the company has long said it cannot maintain on its own posted a combined loss of ▲¥3.498 billion, a deficit ¥141 million wider than the ▲¥3.357 billion of the same period a year earlier. The question of how to keep these railways running has moved to a council led by the national government and Hokkaido, but whether they should be kept is not the subject of this article. Instead, for the 32 main stations on these eight sections, we lay out side by side how many lodging properties and rooms sit within a 2km radius, how far the nearest property is from each station, and what those properties sell for in summer and winter. Putting room counts and distance at the center, we assess where the lodging stock that receives rail-borne travelers stands today.

What Are the Eight Yellow Sections? — Figures for April–June 2026

First, let us confirm the sections in question using JR Hokkaido’s published materials. In November 2016 the company designated sections with a transport density (average passengers per km per day) of 200 to under 2,000 as “sections difficult for the company to maintain on its own,” and from FY2019 it set an action plan for each of the eight sections to promote ridership and cut costs. On April 15, 2026 it proposed a maintenance framework built around vertical separation (separating track ownership from operations), but withdrew the proposal in September after consultations with municipalities along the lines. Since October 9, the discussion has moved to the “Council on Sustainable Operation of the Yellow Sections,” led by the national government and Hokkaido, which is examining improvement measures for each section.

The table below extracts the eight sections from the Q1 FY2026 section-by-section income and expenditure. Compared with the same period a year earlier, the loss widened on six sections — the Soya, Senmo, Hanasaki, Nemuro (Takikawa–Furano), Muroran and Hidaka lines — and narrowed on two, the Sekihoku and Furano lines. The Furano Line has the highest transport density of the eight at 1,126, and density rose year on year on the Senmo Line (272→315), Sekihoku Line (529→572), Nemuro Line (Takikawa–Furano, 364→391) and Furano Line (1,086→1,126). As the quarterly release does not include operating ratios, this article cites only profit/loss and transport density.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from JR Hokkaido, “Section-by-Section Income and Expenditure (Q1 FY2026)” and “Section-by-Section Income and Expenditure (FY2025)” (unit: ¥ million; transport density in passengers/day)

Lodging Stock by Section — Within 2km of the 32 Main Stations

Next, we counted how much lodging lies within a 2km radius of each section’s main stations (25–30 minutes on foot, or five minutes by shuttle). We covered properties with 10 or more rooms; “active” means selling prices were confirmed on major booking sites in the most recent three months. Across the 32 stations, the listed total was 271 properties and 16,983 rooms, of which 155 properties and 13,293 rooms were active. However, 32% of that figure comes from the 2km zone around Asahikawa Station (34 properties, 4,269 rooms), the terminus of the Furano Line. Excluding Asahikawa leaves 121 properties and 9,024 rooms, 63% of which sits at three stations: Kushiro (2,546 rooms), Kitami (1,807) and Tomakomai (1,341). The lodging stock along the eight sections is thick in front of the hub-city stations that connect to trunk lines and thin at intermediate stations.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from MetroEngines Research (within 2km of the 32 main stations, properties with 10+ rooms, as of October 24, 2026; section subtotals de-duplicated)

By section, even excluding Asahikawa Station, the largest number of active rooms is not on the Furano Line (571 rooms) but on the Hanasaki Line (2,888 rooms), most of them in the cluster of business hotels in front of Kushiro Station. The Sekihoku Line has 2,522 rooms at its two stations of Kitami and Abashiri, and the Soya Line 1,032 rooms at Wakkanai and Nayoro. By contrast, the Senmo Line totals just 156 rooms across four stations, the Nemuro Line (Takikawa–Furano) 180 rooms, and the Muroran Line 257 rooms across five stations. The contrast — the Senmo Line, where revenue was reported to have grown thanks to sightseeing trains, has the thinnest active room stock within 2km of its stations — shows directly where there is room to grow lodging capacity. The site conditions of the rooms in front of Kushiro Station, the thickest stock among the eight sections, are examined in Kushiro: 99.6% of 2,752 Hotel Rooms in Tsunami Zone, BCP ¥0.48–1.11M, which inventories every property within 2km of the station.

The breakdown by station is shown below. “Distance to nearest active property” is the straight-line distance from the station to the closest active property; at hub stations there is a station-front hotel about 100m away, while at some intermediate stations the nearest property is more than 1km away. Active rooms within a 5km radius are also shown for reference.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from MetroEngines Research (2km / 5km radius, as of October 24, 2026). Boardings: station-level boardings from JR Hokkaido “Line Section Data” (five-year average FY2021–FY2025, survey on specific weekdays)

Stations With No Active Lodging Within 2km — What Distance Says About Capacity Today

Of the 32 stations, eight had no active property (10+ rooms) within a 2km radius: Toyotomi, Otoineppu, Bifuka, Kamikawa, Kawayu-Onsen, Akabira, Ashibetsu and Oiwake. Of these, Otoineppu, Akabira and Kawayu-Onsen have no qualifying property even on a listed basis, while Toyotomi, Bifuka, Kamikawa, Ashibetsu and Oiwake have listed properties whose selling prices could not be confirmed in the most recent three months. In terms of boardings, Otoineppu Station sees 14.4 passengers a day and Kawayu-Onsen 13.4 — a dozen or so people — meaning that, for now, there are no rooms in front of these stations to receive travelers arriving by rail.

That said, “not within 2km of the station” is not the same as “not along the line.” In the case of Kawayu-Onsen Station, the hot-spring town lies about 3–5km from the station, and widening the radius to 5km brings in four active properties with 133 rooms. Furano Station is similar: 7 active properties and 417 rooms within 2km, expanding to 26 properties and 1,514 rooms within 5km. The roughly 1,100-room difference is concentrated on the ski-resort side (the Kitanomine area and around the New Furano Prince Hotel (新富良野プリンスホテル)), about 2.0–4.7km from the station. In Teshikaga Town, which contains Mashu and Kawayu-Onsen stations, and in Shari Town, home to Shiretoko-Shari Station, the center of lodging is likewise away from the station, in hot-spring towns or on the harbor side. The longer the several-kilometer “last mile” between station and lodging, the more directly the design of shuttles and secondary transport feeds into a property’s revenue.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from MetroEngines Research. ■ = main station (figure = active rooms within 2km); ● = active lodging (size = number of rooms)

Estimated Settled ADR — Levels by Section, September 2026

We check lodging rates using municipality-level estimated settled ADR (tax-exclusive equivalent, two guests per room). In September 2026, rates were high in Wakkanai City on the Soya Line side at about ¥13,400 (N=18, +20.8% YoY) and Shari Town on the Senmo Line side at about ¥14,200 (N=10, +30.7%), followed by Furano City at about ¥12,400, Kushiro City at about ¥11,500 and Tomakomai City at about ¥10,400. Kitami City (about ¥7,900), Nayoro City (about ¥6,900) and Iwamizawa City (about ¥8,300) are at levels driven mainly by business demand, and Abashiri City was about ¥9,100. Wakkanai and Shari rose 20–30% year on year, suggesting that sightseeing areas in northern and eastern Hokkaido lifted rates from summer into autumn 2026.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from MetroEngines Research (estimated settled ADR, tax-exclusive equivalent, two guests per room, finalized months. “Winter÷summer” = February 2026 ÷ July–August 2026 average. Municipalities with N<5 are reference values)

Takikawa City (N=3) and Akkeshi Town (N=3) are shown as reference values because their samples fall short of five properties. Biei Town (N=6), Iwamizawa City (N=6) and Nemuro City (N=6) also have few properties, so readers should note that price changes at individual properties are readily reflected in the municipal figure.

Seasonal Swings — How Rates Move Between Summer and Winter

The areas along the eight sections include some with very large seasonal swings. Comparing estimated settled ADR for summer 2026 (July–August average) and winter (February), the direction is reversed even within Hokkaido. Wakkanai City runs about ¥13,900 in summer against about ¥7,000 in February, so winter is 51% of summer; Kushiro City goes from about ¥12,000 to about ¥8,000 (67%) and Tomakomai City from about ¥12,400 to about ¥8,100 (65%) — in summer-peaking areas, rates fall 30–50% in winter. Abashiri City, on the other hand, runs about ¥8,900 in summer and about ¥10,100 in February, winter beating summer by 13%, and Shari Town is also higher in winter at about ¥15,500 in summer and ¥16,400 in February. Furano City has peaks in both seasons, about ¥21,500 in summer and ¥19,000 in February, holding 88% of its summer level in winter. For why February lifts rates in Hokkaido unlike in other snow-country regions, see Snow Country Winter ADR at 40-50% of Listed; Only Hokkaido Up in Feb, which compares five prefectures side by side.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from MetroEngines Research (estimated settled ADR, finalized months. Summer = July–August 2026 average; winter = February 2026)

The seasonal reasons can be summed up in a line per section. In Abashiri City and Shari Town, drift-ice tourism in February creates the rate peak. In Furano City and Biei Town, July lavender and hillside scenery make the summer peak, and in Furano foreign skiers also support a February peak. Wakkanai City, the gateway to Rishiri and Rebun islands, is concentrated in summer, and Kushiro City likewise centers on summer demand from visitors seeking the wetlands and cool weather. Tomakomai City has a year-round base of ferry and port business demand, with leisure added on top in summer. Teshikaga Town has two peaks — summer at Lakes Mashu and Kussharo, and winter for hot springs and frozen-lake scenery — leaving its winter÷summer ratio nearly flat at 1.03.

These seasonal differences mean that, even within the same eight sections, the properties that receive travelers arriving by rail in winter are concentrated in Abashiri, Shari and Furano. On the Senmo Line, the peaks are offset between the Abashiri side in drift-ice season and the Kushiro Wetland side in summer; the line as a whole has year-round demand, but individual properties are designed to welcome different guest segments in each half of the year.

Room Depth per Rail User — Boardings vs. Rooms Within 2km of Stations

Setting station boardings (weekday, five-year average) against active rooms within 2km shows how many rooms are available per rail user. Because boardings include commuters and students, this figure should be read not as “rooms per traveler” but as an indicator of how thick lodging is relative to the station’s everyday use. Wakkanai Station has 700 active rooms against 85.0 daily boardings, or 8.2 rooms per person; Kitami Station has 4.0, Kushiro Station 3.8 and Nemuro Station 3.9 — at terminal and hub stations, room counts far exceed boardings. Conversely, Iwamizawa Station (3,360.4 boardings, 180 rooms, 0.05 rooms per person) and Tomakomai Station (2,871.4 boardings, 1,341 rooms, 0.47 rooms per person) are heavily used as commuter stations for the Sapporo area, so lodging is thin relative to the number of users.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from MetroEngines Research. Boardings: station-level boardings from JR Hokkaido “Line Section Data” (five-year average FY2021–FY2025, survey on specific weekdays)

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from MetroEngines Research (active rooms within 2km radius, as of October 24, 2026)

The higher this indicator, the more it suggests that guests arriving by other means — air, rental car or bus — are filling the station-front rooms. Wakkanai, Nemuro and Kushiro have airports or ferries, and their lodging potential is supported by demand larger than rail boardings. Put the other way, at these stations there is capacity on the room side to capture travelers arriving by rail, and small measures such as shuttles timed to train arrivals or luggage storage in front of the station can directly offset low boarding numbers.

Stations Along the Lines on Two Axes, Distance × Season — Where to Do What

Combining the two axes so far — how lodging spreads out from the station (active rooms within 5km ÷ active rooms within 2km) and the seasonal pattern (estimated settled ADR for February 2026 ÷ July–August average) — splits the stations by which measures should take priority. The table below is built only from the figures published in this article’s station table and estimated settled ADR table; no new aggregation has been added.

Source: Compiled by the HotelBank Editorial Team from MetroEngines Research (active rooms within 2km / 5km radius as of October 24, 2026; estimated settled ADR for finalized months. Each station is assigned the estimated settled ADR of its municipality. Excluded: stations whose municipality is not in the estimated settled ADR table (Horonobe, Shibecha, Naka-Furano, Kami-Furano, Yuni, Kuriyama, Mukawa) and stations with 0 active rooms within both 2km and 5km. Municipalities with N<5 are reference values)

The top-left cell, “self-contained at station, summer-peaking” (Kushiro, Tomakomai, Numanohata, Nemuro, Biei), contains stations whose rooms are in front of the station and whose rates fall 20–40% in winter; there, winter rail travelers are best treated as a segment for filling occupancy rather than rate. The top-right cell, “self-contained at station, winter peak too” (Abashiri, Nayoro, Shiretoko-Shari), contains stations where winter demand (drift-ice season at Abashiri and Shiretoko-Shari) can be received directly by station-front rooms. The three stations in the bottom row, “spreads away from station” (Wakkanai, Furano, Mashu/Kawayu-Onsen), only reveal their lodging stock once properties 2–5km from the station are included; at Furano Station, the 5km zone is 3.6 times the 2km zone. Here, station shuttles and timetabled secondary transport have the same effect as adding rooms.

This classification depends on where the boundaries are drawn. Lowering the “self-contained at station” threshold from 1.20 to 1.10 moves Abashiri Station (1.18) and Shiretoko-Shari Station (1.10; 1.105 to three decimal places) to the “spreads away” side. Lowering the seasonal boundary from 0.80 to 0.70 moves Nemuro Station (0.79) to “intermediate.” ※Shiretoko-Shari Station’s 5km ratio is only 1.10x, but the center of Shari Town’s lodging is on the Utoro side, about 32km from the station in a straight line, so note that a 5km-radius comparison cannot capture the spread of the town as a whole.

The Operator’s View — Measures to Capture Rail Travelers

To sum up, the lodging stock along the eight sections falls into three types. First, the hub type — such as Kushiro, Kitami, Tomakomai and Asahikawa — with 1,000+ active rooms in front of the station, where rail and air travelers are received by the same station-front hotels. Second, the detached type — such as Furano and Teshikaga — where the center of rooms is in hot-spring towns or on the ski-resort side 2–5km from the station (and in Shari Town, even farther away on the Utoro side), and capturing rail travelers depends on who carries guests between station and lodging. Third, the gap type — intermediate stations on the Soya Line, Nemuro Line (Takikawa–Furano) and Muroran Line — with no active lodging or only one property within 2km. Among the hub type, the economics of the station-front hotels in Kitami and Asahikawa in which the JR Hokkaido Group is involved are worked out as required ADR in JR Hokkaido’s 3 Station Hotels, 806 Rooms: Owners and Required ADR.

For detached-type properties, the most effective step is probably to state clearly that station shuttles are timed to train schedules. Distances such as about 2.5–4km from Furano Station to Kitanomine, or about 4.8km from Kawayu-Onsen Station to the hot-spring town, take around 10 minutes by shuttle, and whether a property can write “connects with the train arriving at XX:XX” in its booking-site description changes the booking rate of rail travelers. The fact on the railway side that revenue on the Senmo Line is growing thanks to sightseeing trains means, from the lodging side, that “guests with fixed arrival times are increasing” — and timetabling shuttles is, in itself, building capacity to receive them.

For hub-type properties, there is an opportunity in proposing multi-night circuit stays. Itineraries such as using Kushiro as a base for a day trip to Nemuro on the Hanasaki Line and back, or using Abashiri as a base to tour the drift ice and Shiretoko-Shari over two days, work well when a station-front hotel at the starting or terminal station serves as a two-night base. The station fronts of Wakkanai, Nemuro and Kushiro, with their high rooms-per-boarding ratios, can host multi-night stays precisely because they have room to spare. For intermediate gap-type stations, where boardings are on the order of a dozen people a day, it is more realistic for properties at the nearest hub station to build circuit itineraries that include that station than to add new rooms.

Winter sales design should differ by section. Abashiri, Shari and Furano have a rate peak in February, so it is worth publishing drift-ice and ski plans aligned with the railway’s winter timetable early. In areas like Wakkanai, Kushiro and Tomakomai, where winter÷summer is 0.5–0.7, it is more natural to treat winter rail travelers as a segment for filling occupancy rather than rate, and to lean toward multi-night and long-stay designs. Either way, these are measures that can start from information a property can add to its description today: the distance from station to lodging and train arrival times.

Summary

Within 2km of the 32 main stations on JR Hokkaido’s eight yellow sections there are 155 active properties with 13,293 rooms; excluding Asahikawa Station, 9,024 rooms, 63% of them at the three stations of Kushiro, Kitami and Tomakomai. Eight stations have no active lodging within 2km, and in areas such as Furano and Kawayu-Onsen the center of lodging lies 2–5km from the station. Estimated settled ADR in September 2026 was high in Wakkanai City (about ¥13,400) and Shari Town (about ¥14,200); on the summer–winter ratio, Abashiri, Shari and Furano are strong in winter while Wakkanai, Kushiro and Tomakomai are summer-peaking. How well rail-borne travelers are received depends less on the number of rooms itself than on how clearly properties state the distance from station to lodging and their connection to train times.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Articles