On October 28, 2026, Bank of the Ryukyus, Ryukyu Capital and Nest Hotel Japan announced in Naha that the hotel they had been renovating in Miyara, Ishigaki City, would reopen under a new brand as “THE NEST Ishigaki” on November 1. The property first opened in 1993 and was last operated by the Kariyushi Group as “Okinawa Kariyushi Resort EXES Ishigaki.” In March 2025 a special purpose company funded by Ryukyu Capital (the asset-holding company “Ishigaki Miyara”) acquired it from Kariyushi. After an interim period under Nest management, renovation began in March 2026, and the hotel has now relaunched as a 54-room family resort in which every room is at least 58 m². This article lays out the revival scheme, which splits ownership (a fund), financing (a regional bank) and operation (a hotel operator). It then looks at the seasonality of Ishigaki City’s estimated settled ADR (our estimate), where a 54-room, 58 m²-per-room product sits in the city’s price range, and what Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) open data says about tsunami risk, land prices and zoning at the Miyara site.

The Public Record: a 1993 Building Revived 20 Months After Acquisition, Opening Nov 1 With 54 Rooms

We start by putting in chronological order the facts that can be confirmed from the companies’ announcements and press coverage. According to the Ryukyu Shimpo (October 29, 2026), Bank of the Ryukyus, Ryukyu Capital and Nest Hotel Japan announced on October 28 that “THE NEST Ishigaki” would open on November 1, after renovation of the guest rooms, lobby and entrance. The Okinawa Times (also October 29) identified the predecessor as “Okinawa Kariyushi Resort EXES Ishigaki” and reported a four-story building with 54 rooms, all 58 m² or larger; two banquet halls converted into concept rooms equipped with game consoles; a refurbished lobby, pool and terrace; and a new farm offering harvest experiences. The Nikkei (October 28) reported that a special purpose company structured with fund equity and a non-recourse loan from Bank of the Ryukyus acquired the closed hotel from Kariyushi in March 2025; that after interim operation by Nest, renovation work started in March 2026; that the renovation cost is about 1.5 times the acquisition price; and that the average room rate target is the high ¥20,000s in the first year, rising to ¥35,000–¥40,000 thereafter.

On project size, the Ryukyu Shimpo headlined “¥5 billion in total” when the acquisition was announced on April 24, 2025, and Zaikai Kyushu (May 1, 2025) also put acquisition plus renovation at about ¥5.0 billion. At the October 2026 opening announcement, however, the total investment was described as undisclosed. This article therefore treats the figure as “a project size of about ¥5.0 billion at the time of announcement,” and the per-room figure of about ¥93 million (¥5.0 billion divided by 54 rooms) carries the same caveat. Zaikai Kyushu gives the most detailed history of the predecessor: it opened in 1993 as “Karuizawa Club Hotel Ishigakijima,” was operated by the Kariyushi Group from 2012, and closed in November 2024. Our own property master also records the opening date as November 1993.

Source: Compiled by MetroEngines Research & Consulting from press reports and company announcements

Splitting Ownership, Finance and Operation — Ryukyu Capital’s Three Okinawa Hotel Deals vs. Genkai Capital

The backbone of this deal is a three-layer structure: ownership sits in a special purpose company (equity from a fund), financing comes from a regional bank’s non-recourse loan, and operation is handed to an operator from outside the prefecture. Ryukyu Capital was set up in May 2020 with investment from Okinawan companies including Bank of the Ryukyus and Okinawa Electric Power. Its first fund totaled ¥6.4 billion (Nikkei, April 8, 2021), and in January 2025 it formed a second fund with Bank of the Ryukyus and 37 Okinawan companies as limited partners (MARR filing). This is the firm’s third hotel investment. The 2021 deal for two Kariyushi hotels in Naha (total project cost about ¥4.5 billion, roughly two-thirds financed by Bank of the Ryukyus and others) was a sale-and-leaseback in which the seller kept operating. The February–March 2025 purchase of Ishigaki Resort Hotel (on Miyara Bay, Fund No. 2) bought out an owner from outside Okinawa and brought in Plan・Do・See as tenant-operator. The EXES Ishigaki deal is a revival: buy a closed property, renovate it, and hand it to an operator.

For comparison, Genkai Capital’s four hotel funds with 189 rooms, which we covered in October, put small new-build and acquisition projects ranging from 15 rooms in Itoshima to 61 rooms on Kouri into separate vehicles, each paired with a regional bank loan. Ryukyu Capital’s deal is larger per transaction, at 54 rooms and about ¥5.0 billion (at announcement) for a single asset, and it is distinctive in that a fund whose mission is “recycling earnings generated in Okinawa back into Okinawa” is taking on a closed property. According to the Nikkei, payback is expected around five years out, and President Tomoyuki Matsubara said that, in keeping with the fund’s purpose, he hopes an Okinawan business will take the asset over. A design that includes the exit could become a template for regional funds getting involved in remote-island resorts.

Source: Compiled by MetroEngines Research & Consulting from the Nikkei (2021/4/8, 2026/10/28), Ryukyu Shimpo (2025/2/15, 2025/3/14, 2025/4/25), Okinawa Times (2025/2/15, 2026/10/29), Zaikai Kyushu (2025/5/1) and a MARR filing

Why Renovate Rather Than Build on a Remote Island — Construction Cost, Schedule and Staffing

Why renovate a closed property? The first reason is construction cost. In MLIT’s Building Construction Starts Statistics for 2025 (hotels or ryokan, nationwide), the planned construction cost was ¥2.405 million per tsubo for steel-frame buildings and ¥2.026 million for reinforced concrete (RC), and the all-structure average rose from ¥1.38 million in 2022 to ¥1.952 million in 2025. THE NEST Ishigaki’s building has a total floor area of about 5,870 m² (about 1,780 tsubo, per haveagood-holiday). Building something that size new in RC would cost about ¥3.6 billion in construction work alone. That uses the national average unit cost and excludes the remote-island premium for shipping materials and workers by sea, as well as site works and land. In this case, the disclosed ratio of renovation cost to acquisition price is about 1.5x; applied directly to the ¥5.0 billion announced, that implies roughly ¥2.0 billion for the acquisition and ¥3.0 billion for the renovation (our estimate). Even reusing the existing structure, the renovation spend works out to a little over 80% of that new-build construction cost, which shows the level of investment in a “revival” that goes as far as the pool, a farm and a reworked room layout.

The second reason is schedule. The renovation started in March 2026 and the hotel opened in November, a span of about eight months. A new build on a remote island typically takes around two years from design and building-permit application to completion, with weather risk on material shipments on top. Using the 1993 structure let the owners set an opening date ahead of the winter 2026 season, which matters a great deal in a market as seasonal as Ishigaki. The third reason is staffing. The Yaeyama Nippo (November 1, 2026) headlined that the hotel is “also working on local hiring.” Moving to a full opening after an interim operating period, during which the operator got to know local staff and the market, lowers start-up uncertainty for the operator as well. In May 2024 Nest renovated “Nest Hotel Ishigaki Maesato Beach” (82 rooms), also in Maezato, Ishigaki City, under a management contract from a fund, so this second Ishigaki property can draw on an existing operating base. Converting existing buildings into lodging supply instead of relying on new construction is also happening on the main island: the conversion of two existing buildings into 342 rooms at Naha’s Asahibashi is covered in Naha Asahibashi: 2 Building Conversions Add 342 Rooms; ADR ¥10,300.

Source: Compiled by MetroEngines Research & Consulting from MLIT Building Construction Starts Statistics 2025, Nikkei 2026/10/28, Yaeyama Nippo 2026/11/1 and haveagood-holiday 2026/10/30

Ishigaki City’s Estimated Settled ADR — October +13.5% YoY, a 1.67x Gap Between August and February

Next, the market side. Ishigaki City’s estimated settled ADR (our estimate, 59 properties, based on listings on major booking sites) was ¥12,021 in October 2026, up 13.5% from ¥10,593 a year earlier. Every month from January through October 2026 came in above the same month of the previous year, and the gains have widened, from +6.2% in January to +14.0% in May and +13.5% in October, with more months in double digits. According to Okinawa Prefecture’s visitor arrival statistics, the Yaeyama region received 1,506,052 visitors in 2025 (+5.6% YoY), a calendar-year record, and January 2026 also set a monthly record at 120,456 (+26.2% YoY). Growing winter arrivals are a tailwind for a revival project that opens in winter.

The seasonal gap is still large, though. February 2026 came in at ¥9,649 against ¥16,118 in August, a ratio of 1.67x. Estimates based on listed rates from November onward put the outlook at ¥11,352 for November, ¥10,885 for December, ¥10,709 for January 2027 and ¥10,409 for February (N=55–58 properties): above the prior year, but only 60–70% of summer levels. THE NEST Ishigaki targets families and three-generation trips and has assembled activities such as farm harvests (sugarcane and island banana harvests planned from around May 2027), shell ginger (getto) distillation and shisa painting. That reads as a design to fill the winter trough with reasons to stay that depend less on the weather. Seasonality itself is analyzed in the Okinawa Hotel Investment Map 2026, so we leave it here.

Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (Ishigaki City estimated settled ADR, 58–60 properties). Nov–Dec 2026 are estimates based on listed rates at the time of the survey

The Predecessor Sold at 1.3–2.2x the City Median — Where 54 Rooms of 58 m² Fit

So where does a product of rooms all 58 m² or larger fit in Ishigaki City? The predecessor’s price history is a clue. The estimated settled ADR (our estimate) of Okinawa Kariyushi Resort EXES Ishigaki (50 rooms) was ¥19,440 in July 2024, 1.42 times the Ishigaki City median, and ¥20,247 in January 2025, 2.24 times the median; its median for calendar 2025 was ¥17,202. Its listed price (two guests per room, tax included, average of all plans) was around ¥37,000 in 2025. From October 2025 to February 2026 it fell from ¥12,047 to ¥9,072, or 0.9–1.5 times the city median, and those figures should be discounted as values from the run-up to renovation.

The operator’s published target is an average room rate in the high ¥20,000s in the first year and ¥35,000–¥40,000 thereafter (Nikkei; whether tax is included is not stated). Among the 30 properties (2,607 rooms) within 3 km of Maezato (Ishigaki City) for which an estimated settled ADR can be calculated, only ANA InterContinental Ishigaki Resort (458 rooms, about ¥31,000) is at ¥20,000 or more, and only THIRD Ishigakijima (28 rooms) sits in the ¥15,000–¥20,000 band. Within 5 km of Miyara, Ishigaki Resort Hotel (50 rooms) has a trailing 12-month median of about ¥25,000 and a calendar-2025 median of about ¥32,000. Widening the view to all of Ishigaki Island (overlapping 5 km radii, excluding Taketomi Island) and the 47 properties (4,073 rooms) with at least six months of estimated settled ADR, only five properties with 1,097 rooms have a trailing 12-month median of ¥20,000 or more: ANA InterContinental Ishigaki Resort, Club Med Ishigaki Island (181 rooms), Seaside Village 13 (10 rooms), Ishigaki Resort Hotel and Fusaki Beach Resort Hotel & Villas (398 rooms). Only one is above ¥30,000 (seven x seven Ishigaki is excluded because no estimated settled ADR can be calculated for it). In other words, the medium-term target of ¥35,000–¥40,000 is a bet on placing 54 rooms in a price band above anything the island currently achieves. The case for it rests on the predecessor’s record in January–February 2025, when it ran at around twice the city median, and on rooms that are 58 m² or larger and all sleep at least four (Nikkei). In the distribution by listed price (two guests per room, tax included), 4 of the 65 operating properties within 3 km (852 rooms) are at ¥30,000 or more, and two of those are large properties: ANA InterContinental and seven x seven Ishigaki (121 rooms).

Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (estimated settled ADR, Jul 2024 – Feb 2026; Ishigaki City is the median of N=58–60 properties)

Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (65 operating properties within 3 km of Maezato, Ishigaki City, classified by each property’s median listed price, Nov 2025 – Oct 2026)

Plotting operating properties on two axes, size and rate, makes the structure within 3 km of Maezato clearer. Business hotels of 100–200 rooms cluster around ¥10,000, and only one property (458 rooms) is at ¥20,000 or more: a “gap in the upper tier.” Looking beyond the radius, Ishigaki Resort Hotel on Miyara Bay (50 rooms, about ¥25,000) is the precedent in the same mid-size, high-rate quadrant, and THE NEST Ishigaki’s 54 rooms follow it as supply aiming for an even higher rate.

Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (30 properties / 2,607 rooms with a calculable estimated settled ADR, median for Nov 2025 – Oct 2026. The dashed box is THE NEST Ishigaki’s published target band. Ishigaki Resort Hotel is a reference point outside the 3 km radius)

Assessing the Miyara Site — Unzoned Land, ¥23,300/m², on the Edge of the Tsunami Inundation Zone

We checked the location against open data in MLIT’s Real Estate Information Library. Miyara, where THE NEST Ishigaki stands, lies in Ishigaki City’s non-delineated city planning area and has no zoning designation. The nearby prefectural land price survey point (Miyara lot 266) shows a 60% building coverage ratio and a 100% floor area ratio, and its price is ¥23,300/m² (July 1, 2026, residential, +6.4% YoY). By contrast, the roadside commercial point on the national highway in Maezato (Maezato lot 544-1) is ¥138,000/m² (+10.4%), and the downtown commercial point (Okawa lot 207-3) is ¥209,000/m² (official land price as of January 1, 2026, +11.2%). Although this compares points with different uses, the spread within the city is about ninefold. Cheap land is a strength of Miyara, and the flip side of a location away from downtown. Being about 10 minutes by car from New Ishigaki Airport closes that distance.

Source: Compiled by MetroEngines Research & Consulting from the MLIT Real Estate Information Library (official land prices and prefectural land price survey, 2026)

For disaster risk, we overlaid the tsunami inundation projection (maximum class) published by Okinawa Prefecture in March 2015, using the same library’s data. The property’s registered coordinates are just outside the projected inundation zone but on its edge: about 90 m toward Miyara Bay the projected depth is 0.3–1 m, at about 120 m it is 5–10 m, and at about 140 m it is 10–20 m. Exactly how much of the site falls inside the zone needs to be checked lot by lot on the prefecture’s detailed district maps. By comparison, the coordinates of the three beachfront properties in Maezato used for comparison (ANA InterContinental Ishigaki Resort, seven x seven Ishigaki and Nest Hotel Ishigaki Maesato Beach) are inside the 5–10 m zone, and Ishigaki Resort Hotel is inside the 2–5 m zone. For a resort close to the sea, being inside a projected inundation zone is not unusual, and evacuation planning and placing rooms on upper floors become design issues. On ground conditions, MLIT’s map of liquefaction tendency by landform classifies Miyara, Maezato and downtown alike as “rock plateau, unlikely to liquefy.” None of the points checked fell within a designated flood inundation, landslide warning or storm surge inundation zone.

Source: Compiled by MetroEngines Research & Consulting from the MLIT Real Estate Information Library (zoning, official land prices and land price survey, tsunami inundation projection, liquefaction tendency map, flood / landslide / storm surge)

Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (property locations and room counts); Okinawa Prefecture tsunami inundation projection (via the MLIT Real Estate Information Library). Circle size reflects room count; dark circles mark properties whose coordinates are inside the projected tsunami inundation zone

Ishigaki City Room Stock — 65 Operating Properties / 3,490 Rooms Within 3 km of Maezato, 6 / 156 Within 5 km of Miyara

Room stock in this article covers lodging facilities with 10 or more rooms (excluding leisure hotels) within a 3,000 m radius of Maezato (Ishigaki City). “Operating” means a selling price was observed on major booking sites in the most recent three months (September – November 2026) (as of November 8, 2026, MetroEngines Research tabulation).

The 3 km radius running from downtown to Maezato holds 105 listed properties with 4,513 rooms, of which 65 properties with 3,490 rooms are operating. By segment, business hotels are the largest group (23 properties, 1,466 rooms), followed by resort hotels (7, 1,130 rooms) and hostels (14, 383 rooms). By size, two properties have more than 200 rooms (703 rooms: ANA InterContinental Ishigaki Resort with 458 and Art Hotel Ishigakijima with 245), seven have 101–200 rooms (973 rooms), and small properties of 50 rooms or fewer make up 70% of the count (46 properties, 1,104 rooms). By opening decade, the 2000s account for 8 properties (787 rooms), the 2010s for 13 (495 rooms) and the 2020s for 18 (684 rooms); properties opened since 2000 hold just over half of operating rooms. Over time, among properties with a known opening year, the stock grew 20% from 2,894 rooms in 2017 to 3,483 rooms in 2026 (the 34 properties with 625 rooms whose opening year is unknown are not included in the time series).

The 5 km radius centered on Miyara, where THE NEST Ishigaki stands, is thin by comparison: 10 listed properties with 241 rooms, of which 6 with 156 rooms are operating. Of the operating rooms, 50 are the predecessor’s registration and 50 are Ishigaki Resort Hotel. In other words, lodging supply along Miyara Bay consists almost entirely of the two deals Ryukyu Capital has been involved in. THE NEST Ishigaki’s 54 rooms are only about 1.5% of the operating stock within 3 km of Maezato (3,490 rooms), but they form the core of supply in the resort belt within 10 minutes of the airport. In 2024, seven x seven Ishigaki (121 rooms, acquisition price ¥18.7 billion), owned by Kasumigaseki Hotel REIT, opened in Ishigaki City, and new supply has been concentrated on the Maezato side. In planning data based on building-permit applications from MLIT’s Building Dynamics Statistics Survey, no permit application for a new large hotel in Ishigaki City could be identified at the time of the survey. Permit applications are usually filed one to two years before opening, so this is a current lower bound that will rise as applications are added, but for now supply is expected to come mainly from reviving closed properties and opening small ones.

Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (within 3 km of Maezato, Ishigaki City; time series of properties with a confirmed opening year. 65 properties in 2026)

Investment Scenarios — What It Means for 54 Rooms to Go After the ¥35,000–¥40,000 Band

Finally, we test the sensitivity by applying the published rate targets to the project size. Assumptions: 54 rooms; room revenue only (food and beverage and activity revenue excluded); full-year occupancy as a placeholder; and a GOP margin of 30–35%, reflecting the typical range for resort hotels. The GOP ratio of the 101 properties run by Ikonia Hospitality, the main tenant disclosed by Invincible Investment Corporation (33.6% for the period ended June 2026, 38.4% for the period ended December 2025), reflects stabilized existing properties, and it is customary to assume something more conservative for the first year of a new opening. The project size used is the ¥5.0 billion announced. This is a simple back-calculation from published figures; actual investment decisions require a detailed feasibility study.

Source: Estimates by MetroEngines Research & Consulting based on the Nikkei 2026/10/28 (rate targets) and Invincible Investment Corporation’s “Financial Results Presentation for the Period Ended June 2026” (GOP ratio)

Scenario D is the downside in which the hotel misses its target and stays at the actual level of the island’s upper tier (about ¥25,000; Ishigaki Resort Hotel, Fusaki Beach Resort and others). What the table shows is that at the first-year target in the high ¥20,000s, room revenue stays around ¥360 million, and only on reaching the ¥35,000–¥40,000 band does room revenue climb to ¥500–600 million and GOP to around ¥200 million. Raising the rate by ¥10,000 contributes more to revenue than raising full-year occupancy by 10 points. The operator’s choice of ¥35,000–¥40,000 as the medium-term target reads as a reflection of a room product (58 m²+, four or more guests) designed to compete on rate. Even accumulated over five years, the GOP-to-project-size ratio of 2.2–4.1% in Scenarios A–C adds up to only 10–20% of the project size, so the payback “around five years out” reported by the Nikkei appears to depend heavily on food and beverage and activity revenue and on the value of the exit, a handover to an Okinawan business. Note also that this deal is a lease to an operator; GOP is an operating-level metric, not the rent or NOI the owner receives. The sensitivity table below shows room GOP (at a 35% GOP margin) as a percentage of the ¥5.0 billion project size for each combination of ADR and full-year occupancy.

Source: Estimates by MetroEngines Research & Consulting (54 rooms, room revenue only, project size of about ¥5.0 billion as announced in April 2025). Because the GOP margin is fixed at 35%, values differ from Scenarios A and D (30% margin) even for the same combination

Implications for Regional Banks, Regional Funds and Operators

For regional financial institutions, this deal is a working example of returning a closed property to the market through a combination of a non-recourse loan, fund equity and an operating contract. Even though the calculation implies renovation spending of a little over 80% of new-build construction cost on a 1993 building, Miyara’s land price, about one-ninth of downtown commercial land, appears to have helped keep the project size down (this compares official land prices and survey points, not the actual land acquisition price in this deal). For regional funds, the design that positions the final deal of Fund No. 1 as a symbol of local reinvestment, with an Okinawan business envisaged as the exit, is a useful reference. For operators, the sequence of learning the market and staff through interim operation before starting renovation, and the sharing of staff and procurement that comes from running two properties on the same island, raise the odds of a successful launch. With Ishigaki City’s estimated settled ADR growing at double digits YoY and winter arrivals setting records, opening now is well timed to go after a thinly supplied upper price tier. On the main island of Okinawa, we have assessed a 134-room new-build plan in Nakijin within the same framework, which offers material for comparing new builds and revivals. The 10-year extension to 2037 of the Act on Inhabited Remote Border Islands also forms part of the backdrop for revival projects like this one, as a policy framework supporting stay-based tourism and employment on remote islands including Ishigaki.

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