Business hotels in Okayama Prefecture closed September 2026 at a high estimated OCC (based on OTA-listed inventory) of 90.5% for the month. Break that figure down by day of week, however, and the picture changes completely. In regular weeks, excluding the five-day holiday (September 19–23), Wednesday ran at 94.2% and Thursday at 92.3%, against 88.0% on Friday, 88.9% on Saturday and 79.4% on Sunday — occupancy stepped down toward the end of the week, and the Wednesday–Sunday gap reached 14.8 points. What lifted the monthly average was the five holiday days (95.2% on average); the 25 regular days averaged only 89.6%. This article extracts the day-of-week structure from the daily series, places the two troughs — Sunday and Friday — in the context of the same month’s finalized estimated settled ADR (¥7,748 for September 2026, +10.1% YoY), and sets out what can be put in place for each day of the week.

Scope: business hotels in Okayama Prefecture, N=87 properties / 10,303 rooms (based on listings on major booking sites; ranges from 87–91 properties and 10,303–11,213 rooms depending on the observation day within the month). The price metric in this article is the estimated settled ADR (the settled-price level estimated from OTA and other sales data, tax-excluded equivalent), and occupancy is an estimate based on OTA-listed inventory. Both are defined at the end of the article. Data as of: November 7, 2026.

Daily estimated OCC in September — the five holiday days lifted the monthly average by 0.9 points

Let us start with the daily trend across the 30 days of September. Estimated OCC (OTA-listed inventory basis) for Okayama business hotels (N=87 properties / 10,303 rooms) began the month at 87.2% on Tuesday September 1, formed its first peak in the second week at 95.3% on Wednesday the 9th and 94.7% on Thursday the 10th, then fell to 79.9% on Sunday the 13th. After that, for the eight days from Tuesday the 15th (95.5%), just before the holiday, through Tuesday the 22nd (96.1%), it never dropped below 94%, and three days in a row — Saturday the 19th at 99.1%, Sunday the 20th at 99.9% and Monday the 21st (Respect for the Aged Day) at 100.0% — saw OTA-listed inventory in the prefecture almost entirely exhausted. The share of properties with no listed inventory visible on OTAs and other channels (sold-out property share, estimated) reached 95.5% on the 20th and 97.7% on the 21st, which indicates that most business hotels in the prefecture were showing as fully booked on those three days.

By contrast, Wednesday September 23 (Autumnal Equinox Day), the last day of the holiday, plunged to 81.0%, and the sold-out property share fell sharply to 8.9% from 44.3% the day before. In a market where a regular-week Wednesday runs at 94.2%, the fact that this Wednesday stopped at 81.0% shows that the last day of a holiday behaves like “a Sunday with work the next day.” There were five days in the month when estimated OCC fell below 85%: Friday the 4th (81.5%), Sunday the 6th (76.8%), Sunday the 13th (79.9%), Wednesday the 23rd (last holiday day, 81.0%) and Sunday the 27th (81.4%). Four of the five were a Sunday or the last day of the holiday.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

To sum up so far, the contribution of the five holiday days to the 90.5% monthly average is far from small. The five holiday days averaged 95.2% and the 25 regular days 89.6%, which means the holiday raised the monthly average by 0.9 points. The breakdown of the five holiday days is shown in the table below.

Okayama business hotels, N=87 properties / 10,303 rooms (87–91 properties depending on observation day). Estimated OCC is based on OTA-listed inventory. Sold-out property share = share of properties with no listed inventory visible on OTAs and other channels (estimated). Holiday classification is based on the Cabinet Office’s “National Holidays.” Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

Estimated OCC by day of week — remove the holiday and a “Wednesday 94.2%, Sunday 79.4%” weekday pattern emerges

So what shape appears when we average by day of week? Averaging all 30 days of September by weekday gives Monday 92.5%, Tuesday 92.6%, Wednesday 91.5%, Thursday 92.3%, Friday 88.0%, Saturday 91.5% and Sunday 84.5%: Friday and Sunday are lower, but Monday–Thursday and Saturday appear to sit broadly in a 91–93% range. These “all-day” figures, however, include the five holiday days (one each on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday), and in particular Sunday September 20 (99.9%) and Saturday September 19 (99.1%) make the Sunday and Saturday averages look higher than they really are.

Re-aggregating on a regular-week basis, excluding the five holiday days, gives Monday 89.9%, Tuesday 91.8%, Wednesday 94.2%, Thursday 92.3%, Friday 88.0%, Saturday 88.9% and Sunday 79.4% — the shape of the week clearly changes. Compared with the all-day basis, Sunday drops 5.1 points from 84.5% to 79.4%, Saturday 2.6 points from 91.5% to 88.9% and Monday 2.6 points from 92.5% to 89.9%, while Wednesday, once the holiday Wednesday (September 23, 81.0%) is removed, rises 2.7 points from 91.5% to 94.2%. The result is a classic weekday-demand-driven shape: peaking on Wednesday, falling toward the weekend through Thursday 92.3% → Friday 88.0% → Saturday 88.9% → Sunday 79.4%, then gradually recovering through Monday 89.9% and Tuesday 91.8% back to Wednesday.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

Okayama business hotels, N=87 properties / 10,303 rooms (87–91 properties depending on observation day), September 2026. Holiday excluded = the 25 days excluding September 19–23. Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

That said, it should not be overlooked that the holiday also casts a shadow over Friday’s 88.0%. Of the four Fridays, Friday September 18 was the eve of the five-day holiday and ran high at 94.6%; the average of the other three (81.5% on the 4th, 87.7% on the 11th and 88.3% on the 25th) falls to 85.8%. In other words, it is closer to reality to say that a normal Friday, without the tailwind of a holiday eve, ran more than 8 points below Wednesday. The sold-out property share tells the same story: on a holiday-excluded basis it was 35.0% on Wednesday and 31.1% on Thursday, versus 16.3% on Friday, 18.4% on Saturday and 7.9% on Sunday. In the second half of the week, the number of properties reaching a fully booked display fell to around half of Wednesday’s level or less, which shows that “the days when occupancy drops” are also “the days with the most room to move price.” For another prefecture that showed the same two troughs on Friday and Sunday in September, see Chiba Business Hotels Sep 2026: Sun 81.8%, Fri 84.1% — Two OCC Troughs.

This day-of-week structure is not unique to September. For reference, looking at the most recent month, October 2026 (87–91 properties), by day of week using the same method gives Wednesday 98.0%, Thursday 97.4%, Friday 93.8%, Saturday 95.2%, Sunday 86.2% and Monday 89.7% — the same shape recurs, peaking on Wednesday–Thursday and bottoming out on Sunday. October’s Monday is low because Monday October 12 (Sports Day) came in at 82.8%, behaving like the last day of a holiday — the same phenomenon as Wednesday September 23 (Autumnal Equinox Day) at 81.0%. It is fair to read this as occupancy being determined less by the day of the week itself than by “whether the next day is a working day.” The August day-of-week structure for the same Okayama business hotels is analyzed in Okayama Business Hotels: Wed 92.4% vs Sun 74.6%, a 17.8pt Sunday Gap.

Comparison with neighboring prefectures — Okayama and Hiroshima show a ~15pt Wednesday–Sunday gap; Saturday trails Hyogo and Tottori

Okayama’s shape comes into sharper focus when compared with surrounding markets. Aggregated the same way, excluding the September 2026 holiday (19th–23rd), the Wednesday–Sunday gap was 15.5 points in Hiroshima and 14.8 points in Okayama, against 9.0 points in Hyogo, 9.3 points in Kagawa and 8.9 points in Tottori. How the gap arises, however, differs by comparison. Against Kagawa (Wednesday 88.2%, Sunday 78.9%), Sunday is almost at the same level and the difference comes from Okayama’s high Wednesday; against Hyogo (Wednesday 93.9%, Sunday 84.9%), Wednesday is almost at the same level and the difference comes from Okayama’s low Sunday.

Business hotels in each prefecture, September 2026. Property counts are the mode across observation days (by observation day: Hiroshima 165–168, Hyogo 145–150, Kagawa 84–85, Tottori 45–47, Okayama 87–91). Day-of-week figures are averages of the 25 days excluding September 19–23. Estimated OCC is based on OTA-listed inventory. Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

The other difference shows up on Saturday. Okayama’s Saturday at 88.9% was close to Hiroshima’s 89.8%, but more than 3 points below Hyogo (92.0%) and Tottori (93.6%). Because Friday differs little — Okayama 88.0%, Hyogo 88.7%, Tottori 87.8% — the gap with these two prefectures appears on Saturday rather than Friday (Kagawa, at 85.2% on Friday and 87.7% on Saturday, is below Okayama on both). Note, however, that the holiday-excluded Saturday is an average of three days in each prefecture, and the share of inventory listed on OTAs also varies by prefecture. These figures are best read as differences in the shape of the week, not as a ranking of absolute levels.

Estimated settled ADR (monthly, finalized) — ¥7,748 in September, +10.1% YoY

Before considering tactics to fill the day-of-week troughs, it is worth pinning down where prices stand using finalized figures. The estimated settled ADR for Okayama business hotels (N=97 properties, finalized) was ¥7,748 in September 2026, up 10.1% from the same month a year earlier (September 2025: ¥7,039, N=97 properties). Finalized figures are also available for the surrounding months: ¥7,900 in August 2026 (August of the previous year ¥7,957, −0.7%) and ¥8,021 in October 2026 (October of the previous year ¥7,234, +10.9%). Rates that were flat year on year in August switched to double-digit growth in September and October. Note that the estimated settled ADR is canonical at the monthly level, so day-of-week price levels are not covered in this article.

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

Estimated settled ADR for Okayama business hotels (tax-excluded equivalent, finalized monthly values). Figures in parentheses are the number of properties covered by the estimate. Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

When reading the year-on-year change, calendar differences also need attention. In September 2025 the holidays were split between the 15th (Respect for the Aged Day) and the 23rd (Autumnal Equinox Day), and there was no five-day holiday as in 2026. September’s +10.1% may therefore include this calendar effect. However, October — which contained one three-day weekend in both years — also rose 10.9%, so the calendar difference alone cannot fully explain it.

Behind this lies September’s supply-demand balance, with inventory tight on both the holiday and weekdays. Estimated OCC exceeded 95% on eight days in the month, seven of which were concentrated in the holiday (September 19–22) and the Tuesday–Thursday before it (September 15–17). The fact that, in a month when rates grew by double digits year on year, regular-week Sundays were left at 79.4% and Fridays at 88.0% means the market as a whole reaped the benefits of higher rates while still leaving rooms unsold at the day-of-week level. The next section brings this structure — “winning on the month, losing ground on individual days” — back to the operation of your own property.

To revenue managers running business hotels in Okayama Prefecture — implications and action plan

All decision-trigger figures are aggregates from this article (Okayama business hotels, September 2026; holiday excluded = excluding September 19–23).

Summary — three yardsticks for day-of-week analysis

First, read the monthly average with the holiday removed. Okayama business hotels averaged 90.5% for September 2026, but regular weeks excluding the five holiday days (95.2% on average) came to 89.6%, and by day of week there was a 14.8-point spread from Wednesday’s 94.2% to Sunday’s 79.4%. Second, the troughs sit in two places, Sunday and Friday, and they differ in nature. Sunday is structurally low as long as the next day is a weekday (sold-out property share 7.9%), while Friday loses business demand yet has the elasticity to climb to 94.6% on a holiday eve. Third, classify holidays not by calendar weekday but by “whether the next day is a weekday.” The last holiday days, Wednesday September 23 (81.0%) and Monday October 12 (82.8%), behaved like Sundays. On the price side, September’s estimated settled ADR has been finalized at ¥7,748 (+10.1% YoY), and how to fill the day-of-week unsold rooms in a month of rising rates will be the question facing the Okayama market from October onward. Most immediately, the night of the Okayama Marathon on Sunday November 8 falls on “a Sunday followed by a weekday,” and how to close the gap with the night before is covered in Okayama Marathon 2026: Race Eve 88.5% OCC vs Race Night 67.7%.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Is estimated OCC the same as the actual room occupancy rate?
A. No. Estimated OCC in this article is an estimate based on OTA-listed inventory, calculated from how inventory sold on OTAs is being consumed. Because unlisted rooms are counted on the sold side, it tends to come out higher than actual room occupancy. It is intended as a metric for relative comparison between days of the week.

Q. Doesn’t the article analyze price (ADR) by day of week?
A. Not in this article. Because the estimated settled ADR is canonical at the monthly level, price is referenced only through the finalized September 2026 figure of ¥7,748 (+10.1% YoY), and day-of-week comparisons are limited to occupancy (estimated OCC).

Q. Which days are removed in the holiday-excluded aggregation?
A. The five days from Saturday September 19 to Wednesday September 23, 2026 (Autumnal Equinox Day). Based on the Cabinet Office’s “National Holidays,” September 21 is Respect for the Aged Day, September 22 is a substitute holiday and September 23 is Autumnal Equinox Day, making a five-day holiday together with the weekend.

About the Data

Source: MetroEngines Research; compiled by HotelBank Editorial Team

References and Sources

Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, “About National Holidays” (国民の祝日について) https://www8.cao.go.jp/chosei/shukujitsu/gaiyou.html (used to confirm the dates of 2026 national holidays and substitute holidays)