Holiday Inn Express Sapporo Susukino (223 rooms), announced by IHG Hotels & Resorts on April 27, 2026 and opened on July 17, is a conversion of an existing building through a major renovation. It is owned by a consortium that includes Mitsubishi Corporation Urban Development, Tokyo Tatemono and Sankei Building, and operated by IHG under a management contract. It is the second Holiday Inn Express in Japan and the first in Hokkaido. Within the same 1km radius of Susukino, seven properties with 10 or more rooms (1,115 rooms in total) opened in 2026, bringing operating room stock in the area to roughly 20,000 rooms. This article examines the choice of the “box” (a renovated conversion) and the positioning (mid-priced with breakfast included) through the area’s room-stock trend, the estimated settled ADR in Chuo Ward, booking pace, and building plans for 2027-28.

Room stock in this article covers lodging properties with 10 or more rooms (excluding leisure/love hotels) within a 1,000m radius of Susukino. “Operating” refers to properties with a sale price observed on major booking sites in the most recent 3 months (August-October 2026) (as of October 25, 2026; compiled by MetroEngines Research).

Executive Summary — A 223-Room Conversion Into a 21,000-Room 1km Market; Net Growth of 579 Rooms This Year

The conclusion first. Room stock within 1km of Susukino expanded +44.9% over 10 years, but net growth in 2026 was only 579 rooms, as exits offset the opening of seven properties with 1,115 rooms. Even in September, with more supply, Chuo Ward’s estimated settled ADR held at ¥16,100 (+7.2% YoY) and estimated OCC remained high at 92.7%. In other words, the 2026 opening rush has not broken rates so far. In this market, Holiday Inn Express has entered at almost the same level as the median estimated settled ADR of the 82 business hotels (¥16,400) — with breakfast included — which reads as a strategy of “taking the dead center of the mid-price band with breakfast included.” On the box side, at a time when new-build construction cost reaches an assumed ¥20.67M-¥32.74M per room, choosing a renovated conversion pays off in both time to opening and cost.

Facts of the Opening — What Primary Sources Confirm

First, the facts confirmed by primary sources. According to IHG Hotels & Resorts’ press release (April 27, 2026) and the PR TIMES opening announcement, Holiday Inn Express Sapporo Susukino has 223 rooms, is owned by a consortium including Mitsubishi Corporation Urban Development, Tokyo Tatemono and Sankei Building, and is operated by IHG under a management contract. A major renovation was already under way at the time of the announcement; the materials do not give the name of the building before renovation, and this article does not speculate. It is the first property in Japan to adopt the brand’s next-generation “Generation 5” design, offers an Express Café, fitness room and laundry, and — as a brand-wide feature — includes breakfast with every stay. It is about a 5-minute walk from Susukino Station on the Namboku subway line and about 3 minutes from the Shiseikan Shogakko-mae streetcar stop.

In the same release, IHG’s Managing Director for Japan & Micronesia stated that “every hotel IHG opens in Japan in 2026 is a rebrand.” The policy of building supply by converting existing buildings rather than building new applies directly to the Sapporo project. For the reflag of 14 hotels with 1,063 rooms in Kyoto under the same policy, IHG Reflags 14 Kyoto Hotels (1,063 Rooms): 5.9% of Station-Area Stock models the economics down to franchise income and costs. With this in mind, the following sections examine the area’s supply structure in numbers.

10 Years of Room Stock Within 1km of Susukino — From 14,500 to 21,000 Rooms; 2020s Openings Are One-Third of Operating Rooms

Tracking annual room stock within a 1km radius centered on Susukino (43.0547°N, 141.3487°E), based on properties with a confirmed opening year, stock expanded +44.9% from 86 properties / 14,532 rooms in 2017 to 125 properties / 21,060 rooms in 2026. By year, growth was strongest through 2019, at +1,278 rooms in 2018 and +1,888 in 2019; 2020 added +613 rooms and 2021 was roughly flat (-43 rooms); stock then built up again at +673 to +714 rooms a year in 2022-24. 2025 saw only a small +143 rooms before growth resumed in 2026. The 2026 net increase of 579 rooms is the opening of seven properties with 1,115 rooms minus exits.

Splitting operating rooms by decade of opening, properties opened in the 2020s account for 44 properties / 6,516 rooms, or 32.6% of operating rooms; together with 28 properties / 4,526 rooms opened in the 2010s, the majority are buildings from 2010 onward. Meanwhile, 2,970 operating rooms opened in the 1970s-80s remain, so buildings over 40 years old still provide about 15% of the area’s supply. This age profile also shows that a meaningful number of “boxes” exist as candidates for renovated conversion (for room growth across Chuo Ward and the conversion of Tobu Hotel to Fairfield, see Sapporo Chuo Ward Added 9,654 Rooms in 7 Years: Tobu to Fairfield).

By size class, the 34 properties with 201+ rooms hold 10,336 operating rooms, just over half the total. Holiday Inn Express’s 223 rooms sit at the lower end of this class, squarely within the area’s main size band. By category, business hotels account for 82 operating properties / 13,292 rooms, city hotels 16 / 4,579 and deluxe hotels 2 / 352 — business hotels supply two-thirds of the rooms.

7 Openings With 1,115 Rooms in 2026 and 5 With 624 in 2025 — Flagship and Lifestyle Hotels Side by Side Within the Same 1km

Seven properties with 10 or more rooms (1,115 rooms) opened within 1km in 2026: Holiday Inn Express Sapporo Susukino (223 rooms), Hyatt Centric Sapporo (216), KOKO HOTEL Sapporo Susukino 2nd (212), Regionia by Quintessa Sapporo Ekimae (175), Lando Hotel Sapporo Heritage (125) and Prestige (118), and Rakuten STAY Sapporo Nakajima Park (46). The three properties with more than 200 rooms account for 60% of the total. In 2025, five properties with 624 rooms opened, including Holiday Inn & Suites Sapporo Odori Park (195 rooms) and Dansetsu Sapporo (136 rooms). Supply of 12 properties / 1,739 rooms over two years equals about 8.7% of operating rooms.

Hyatt Centric Sapporo was listed as “2026, 216 rooms” among 10 upcoming openings in Hyatt Japan’s press materials (April 2026), and it opened on October 3, 2026. At the time of those materials, Hyatt Japan operated 22 hotels across 9 brands in Japan (5,066 rooms in total), and Park Hyatt Sapporo (157 rooms) is also planned for Sapporo in 2029. The entry of an international brand’s upper segment within 1km of Susukino widens the upper end of the area’s rate distribution.

Per-Room Cost of a Renovated Conversion — A Comparison Framework Against New Builds at ¥20.67M-¥32.74M per Room

Why convert rather than build new? The level of construction costs explains most of the answer. In Archi-Book’s compilation based on the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) “Building Starts Survey,” hotel construction costs in 2025 were ¥2.405M per tsubo for steel frame, ¥2.026M per tsubo for reinforced concrete and ¥1.952M per tsubo across all structures, holding at a high level versus the 2024 all-structure average of ¥1.955M per tsubo (Building Starts Survey, lodging use) (the site notes that 2025 figures mix planned construction costs with and without consumption tax, so year-on-year comparisons require caution). Compared with the ¥1.0M-¥1.5M per tsubo for business hotels cited by hotel investment media HOTELISM as a benchmark for limited-service hotels (as of 2023), the level has stepped up in just two years.

Converting to a per-room figure requires gross floor area. Holiday Inn Express’s floor area has not been disclosed, so this article uses an assumed range. A useful reference is building plans in the same Minami 7-jo area of Chuo Ward: the building application for a 126-room project at Minami 7-jo Nishi 4-chome lists 7,730.59㎡ of floor area (about 61㎡ per room), and a 200-room project at Minami 7-jo Nishi 5-chome lists 8,554.54㎡ (about 43㎡ per room). A limited-service conversion is likely to be smaller, so we assume 35-45㎡ of floor area per room. For a new build, that implies construction cost of ¥20.67M-¥32.74M per room (excluding land).

There are no published statistics in Japan on renovation-conversion cost as a share of new-build cost. This article therefore assumes 40-60% of new-build cost, on the premise of reusing the existing structure, exterior and core building systems, giving ¥8.27M-¥19.64M per room. This is not Holiday Inn Express’s actual investment, but a framework for converting an existing 223-room building to a hotel in Susukino. The per-room cost of rebranding existing Sapporo hotels is estimated from measured values for 15 properties in Hotel Brand Conversion Costs 1/7 of New Build: 15 Sapporo Hotels. The difference in construction period also matters. IHG announced the project in April 2026 and it opened in July, with renovation already in progress at announcement. Shortening the 2-3 years a new build needs to reach opening, and generating revenue in a strong-demand year like 2026, matters as much as the cost gap.

To translate this into investment returns, the cost of the box must be considered together with the cost of acquiring the building. Dividing the acquisition prices of the seven properties held by J-REITs within the area by their room counts gives a range of ¥11.98M-¥45.75M per room (acquired 2015-2023), one reference level for “buying an existing hotel building in Susukino.” Estimates combining this acquisition range with the renovation range are presented in the investment summary below.

Positioning in the Mid-Price Band With Breakfast — Overlapping the ¥16,400 Median of 82 Business Hotels

Now for price positioning. For 99 operating business, city, deluxe and resort properties within 1km, we plotted the estimated settled ADR for July-September 2026 (the 3-month median of monthly medians) against room count. The median for the 82 business hotels is ¥16,400 and for the 16 city hotels ¥20,100. Holiday Inn Express Sapporo Susukino’s monthly estimated settled ADR swung widely — ¥15,200 in August, ¥18,100 in September and ¥14,700 in October (¥22,400 over 15 days in July, its opening month) — and the September value of ¥18,100 plotted on the chart sits slightly above the business-hotel median. Because this level includes breakfast, the effective value offered is richer than the same price band on a room-only basis.

Looking at room distribution by price band, 36 business hotels with 6,854 rooms cluster in the ¥15,000-¥21,000 estimated settled ADR band, 51.6% of business-hotel rooms in the area. This is the thickest mid-price band, and 2026 openings KOKO HOTEL Sapporo Susukino 2nd (¥16,400) and Regionia by Quintessa Sapporo Ekimae (¥18,700) also landed in it. By contrast, the ¥25,000+ band is thin, with 6 business hotels / 957 rooms and 3 city hotels / 1,194 rooms, and the deluxe-category Hyatt Centric Sapporo (216 rooms; October listed price, all-plan average ¥88,100) sits alone at the top. A thick mid-price band and a thin upper band are the current shape of the Susukino market.

Chuo Ward Estimated Settled ADR — ¥16,100 in September (+7.2%); February Is the Annual Peak at ¥20,600

Overlaying Sapporo Chuo Ward’s estimated settled ADR (all categories, median) by month makes the seasonal pattern clear. In 2026, February was the annual peak at ¥20,600 and April the trough at ¥8,600, a 2.4x gap. Summer stayed on a plateau — ¥18,100 in July, ¥16,400 in August and ¥16,100 in September — and September was +7.2% YoY (N=140). August was -10.5% YoY, below the prior year, but that is a reaction to an unusually high ¥18,300 in August 2025; compared with August 2024 it remains high.

By category, in February 2026 business hotels were at ¥20,300 and city hotels at ¥29,400; in the Snow Festival month, rates in both categories rise to 1.4-1.8x the surrounding months. September was ¥15,900 for business and ¥19,000 for city hotels. Looking ahead, estimates from listed rates at the time of the survey put February 2027 at ¥22,800 (+10.3% YoY, N=129) and November at ¥11,300 (-10.6% YoY), so the winter peak and autumn trough are expected to continue next season. Travel agency listings give the dates of the 2027 Sapporo Snow Festival (77th) as February 4-11, 2027, and the City of Sapporo has asked the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force to support construction of the large snow sculptures.

Supply and Demand — Estimated OCC of 92.7% in September; November Starts 8.8pt Lower at 77.1% at LT14

We check supply and demand right after the supply increase using Chuo Ward’s estimated OCC and booking curves. Estimated OCC was 92.9% in August 2026 (103 properties / 14,899 rooms, based on major booking-site listings), 92.7% in September (103 properties / 14,907 rooms) and 90.7% in October through the 24th (112 properties / 15,997 rooms). The gap between business and city hotels was within 1pt in every month, showing no category skew in demand.

Drawing booking curves from LT45 to the day before arrival, September (107 properties / 15,278 rooms) built up linearly: 72.7% at LT45, 85.9% at LT14 and 92.7% the day before. November, still in progress (117 properties / 17,511 rooms), is running 8.2-8.8pt below September at the same lead times, at 64.5% at LT45 and 77.1% at LT14. November is also the autumn trough for estimated settled ADR, and this pace comes with listed rates already 10.6% lower. However, Sapporo’s autumn has a high share of last-minute bookings, and even September’s curve added about 7pt between LT14 and the day before. November’s final result will depend on whether this last-minute demand arrives as usual.

This is consistent with REIT disclosures. In Invincible Investment Corporation’s property-level results for August 2026, Hotel MyStays Premier Sapporo Park (419 rooms) within the 1km area posted 92.0% occupancy and ADR of ¥19,659, and Hotel MyStays Sapporo Susukino (104 rooms) posted 94.8% and ¥15,164. These match this article’s Chuo Ward estimated OCC of 92.9% (August); for estimated settled ADR, the two properties’ July-September medians of ¥17,900 and ¥14,000 are 8-9% below the disclosed values, broadly consistent for an estimate.

Next Supply — Plans for 126 Rooms in February 2027 and 200 Rooms in May 2028, and a 575-Room Exit in August 2027

Whether the 2026 openings are absorbed depends on the supply and exits that come next. Our building-plan data, based on MLIT’s “Building Dynamics Statistics,” shows two plans within 1km: a 10-story, 126-room building at Minami 7-jo Nishi 4-chome (7,730.59㎡; construction started June 2025, completion scheduled for February 2027; developer Tokyu Land Corporation), and an 11-story, 200-room building at Minami 7-jo Nishi 5-chome (8,554.54㎡; construction started May 2026, completion scheduled for May 2028; developers Marubeni Urban Development, Haseko Corporation and Sohgo Housing). Neither brand has been announced, so this article treats them as “plans.” Counts based on building applications are a lower bound at the time of the survey and are expected to rise as more applications are filed.

Exits are also large. On June 30, 2026, Tokyu Corporation and Tokyu Hotels & Resorts announced that Sapporo Tokyu REI Hotel (575 rooms, opened June 1980) will close on August 31, 2027 upon expiry of its fixed-term building lease. The successor tenant and operator is Tokyu Resorts & Stay, which plans to reopen it after renovation as a rebranded hotel under its own operation in 2028. The 575 rooms — about 2.9% of operating rooms in the area — will leave the market for about a year, then return as a renovated conversion. The same move as Holiday Inn Express — “renovating an existing box and putting it back on the market” — will continue at one of the largest scales in the area.

Acquisition Prices of 7 J-REIT-Owned Properties — ¥11.98M-¥45.75M per Room, a Reference Point for the Price of the Box

Our ownership master (as of October 19, 2026) confirms seven J-REIT-owned properties with 1,566 rooms within the area: Invincible Investment Corporation’s Hotel MyStays Premier Sapporo Park (419 rooms; acquisition price ¥16,731M) and Hotel MyStays Sapporo Susukino (104 rooms; ¥3,059M); Japan Hotel REIT Investment Corporation’s La’gent Stay Sapporo Odori (219 rooms; ¥10,020M), ibis Styles Sapporo (278 rooms; ¥6,797M) and Mercure Sapporo (285 rooms; ¥6,000M); and Ichigo Hotel REIT Investment Corporation’s THE KNOT SAPPORO (140 rooms; ¥4,900M) and Nest Hotel Sapporo Odori (121 rooms; ¥1,450M). Japan Hotel REIT does not publish property-level acquisition dates in its portfolio list, so the comparison of acquisition timing covers the five properties of the other two REITs.

Per-room acquisition prices range nearly 4x, from ¥11.98M to ¥45.75M, showing that the price of the box varies widely with building age, grade and timing of acquisition. THE KNOT SAPPORO, acquired in August 2023 (¥35.0M per room), sits in the same band as the two MyStays properties acquired in the late 2010s (¥29M-¥40M per room), suggesting ¥30M-¥40M per room as the recent transaction level for mid-sized hotels in Susukino and Odori. On that basis, we model the economics of a 223-room conversion.

Investment Summary — Assumed Yields of 3.0-9.3% for a 223-Room Conversion; Acquisition Cost Is the Biggest Variable

We pull the figures so far into one framework. For converting an existing 223-room building to a hotel in Susukino, we set conservative, base and bullish scenarios starting from the estimated settled ADR of Chuo Ward business hotels (July-September median ¥16,400) and estimated OCC (in the 90% range). The GOP margin is assumed at 40-50% for this article. Acquisition cost uses the REIT transaction levels from the previous section, and renovation cost uses this article’s assumed conversion range. All are this article’s assumptions, not Holiday Inn Express’s actual investment or operating figures.

The base scenario (ADR ¥16,500, annual OCC 85%, GOP margin 45%, total investment ¥9.8bn) yields 5.2%. A 10% drop in ADR lowers it to 4.7%, a 5pt drop in OCC to 4.9%, and both together to 4.4%. The sensitivity shows that differences in acquisition cost move the yield more than operating swings do. The ¥6.2bn gap in total investment between the conservative and bullish cases breaks down into about ¥4.0bn from the per-room acquisition cost difference (¥40M vs. ¥22M) and about ¥2.2bn from the renovation cost difference (¥19M vs. ¥9M). The conclusion this framework points to is that the economics of a renovated conversion are determined first by “how much you paid for the box,” before operating skill.

Holding total investment at the base case’s ¥9.8bn and moving ADR and annual OCC together, the yield stays within a range of 4.2% (ADR ¥14,500, OCC 77%) to 6.4% (ADR ¥18,500, OCC 93%), a spread of only about 2.3pt. The gap to 3.0% when acquisition and renovation costs are set at the conservative case (total investment ¥13.2bn) and 9.3% at the bullish case (¥6.9bn) is wider; here too, the per-unit acquisition price of the box, not operating metrics, sets the yield first.

Risk factors can be grouped into three. First, supply: in addition to the 126-room plan in February 2027 and the 200-room plan in May 2028, 575 rooms return as a rebrand in 2028. Second, seasonality: Chuo Ward is a market where estimated settled ADR in February and April differs by 2.4x, and November’s booking pace is about 9pt behind September’s. Full-year RevPAR depends on how much of the winter peak can be captured. Third, construction costs: the higher new-build costs per tsubo stay, the more the relative advantage of conversion is preserved, but renovation costs are subject to the same materials and labor costs. Each is the flip side of upside potential, and the positioning of mid-priced with breakfast included fits Sapporo’s market structure in that it makes it easier to fill seasonal swings with last-minute demand. This is a simplified estimate; actual investment decisions require a detailed feasibility study.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. When did Holiday Inn Express Sapporo Susukino open, and how many rooms does it have?

It opened on July 17, 2026 with 223 rooms. It is operated by IHG Hotels & Resorts under a management contract and owned by a consortium including Mitsubishi Corporation Urban Development, Tokyo Tatemono and Sankei Building. It is a conversion of an existing building through a major renovation, and is the second Holiday Inn Express in Japan and the first in Hokkaido.

Q. How many hotels opened within 1km of Susukino in 2026?

Seven properties with 10 or more rooms opened, with 1,115 rooms in total — including Holiday Inn Express Sapporo Susukino (223 rooms), Hyatt Centric Sapporo (216 rooms) and KOKO HOTEL Sapporo Susukino 2nd (212 rooms). That equals 5.6% of the roughly 20,000 operating rooms in the area. The net increase, based on properties with a confirmed opening year, is 579 rooms.

Q. What are hotel rates in Sapporo’s Chuo Ward?

MetroEngines Research’s estimated settled ADR (tax-exclusive equivalent, median) was ¥16,100 in September 2026, +7.2% YoY. February is the annual peak at ¥20,600, 2.4x April’s ¥8,600.

Q. How much cheaper is a renovated conversion than a new build?

There are no published statistics in Japan comparing conversion to new-build cost, so this article assumes a range of 40-60% of new-build cost. Hotel construction costs in 2025 (based on the Building Starts Survey) averaged ¥1.952M per tsubo across all structures and ¥2.405M per tsubo for steel frame; assuming 35-45㎡ of floor area per room, new-build construction cost is about ¥21M-¥33M per room, versus about ¥8.3M-¥19.6M for a conversion.

Q. What supply is planned around Susukino?

Building-plan data show a 126-room plan at Minami 7-jo Nishi 4-chome (scheduled completion February 2027) and a 200-room plan at Minami 7-jo Nishi 5-chome (scheduled completion May 2028); neither brand has been announced. Sapporo Tokyu REI Hotel (575 rooms) will close on August 31, 2027 and is scheduled to reopen under a new brand in 2028. Park Hyatt Sapporo (157 rooms) is also planned for 2029.

Summary

Room stock within 1km of Susukino reached 21,000 rooms, up +44.9% over 10 years, and seven properties with 1,115 rooms opened in 2026. Even so, Chuo Ward’s estimated settled ADR rose +7.2% YoY in September and estimated OCC held in the 90% range; the opening rush has not broken rates so far. Holiday Inn Express Sapporo Susukino chose a renovated conversion of an existing building at a time of elevated construction costs and reached opening about three months after the announcement. Its pricing enters the mid-price band that overlaps the median of 82 business hotels — with breakfast included — positioning it to compete head-on for the deepest layer of demand. The next question is how a market with a winter peak and an autumn trough absorbs 326 planned rooms scheduled for completion in February 2027 and May 2028, plus the exit of 575 rooms closing in August 2027 and their later return under a new brand.

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