How thick a layer did the business hotel rooms opened in 2026 add to each prefecture’s listed stock? Within the coverage tracked by MetroEngines Research, we calculated the ratio of rooms opened in 2026 for business hotels in all 47 prefectures, and overlaid how far listed inventory had been absorbed on three stay dates: the peak of the 5-day September holiday (September 20), a regular Saturday (October 24), and a weekday (October 21). Saitama has the highest ratio at 15.5%, followed by Okayama at 14.5% and Kumamoto at 14.3%. Meanwhile Iwate and Tochigi, which both received supply above 10%, split sharply at 14 days before the holiday peak: estimated occupancy of 99.9% versus 90.7%.
This article overlays supply depth and the speed of inventory absorption across the 47 prefectures, and classifies, from observations on three stay dates that have already passed, which prefectures already have deep capacity to absorb new rooms and which still have room to expand that capacity. It is written for developers, regional banks and asset managers, as input for next year’s opening and lending decisions on the question of which prefectures’ supply is being absorbed by real demand.
• ADR (Average Daily Rate) = estimated settled rate (tax-excluded equivalent), calculated by applying a segment-specific adjustment factor to the lowest published plan level on OTAs (per room, 2 guests per room, tax included). Benchmarked against property-level results disclosed by listed hotel REITs (91 properties, most recent 3 months), the median error is about 7%. These are estimates and differ from each property’s actual settled prices and accounting figures.
• ADR at the area level (prefecture, city/ward) is the median of the estimated settled rates of the hotels covered (the level of a typical property in the area).
• Where listed prices are referenced, they are per-room rates for 2 guests per room (tax included).
• OCC (occupancy) = rooms sold as a share of total rooms in the area (an estimate based on OTA sales inventory).
• Source: MetroEngines Research (continuous tracking of OTA published prices for approx. 168,000 properties in Japan, of which approx. 27,000 are confirmed operating)
• New-room ratio = rooms in business hotels (10+ rooms) confirmed to have opened between January 1 and October 31, 2026 ÷ total rooms in the same prefecture’s business hotel cohort. The denominator is the cohort for the September 20 stay date (a fixed set of hotels listing at least 30% of their total rooms on major booking sites); new hotels that have opened and meet the cohort criteria are included in the denominator as well. It is therefore a ratio to listed stock, not to existing stock. Openings confirmed as rebrands or conversions of existing buildings are excluded from new supply.
• LT (lead time) = days before check-in. LT1 = the day before. This article uses only observations from LT45 to LT1.
• Estimated occupancy (listed-inventory basis) = 100 − 100 × remaining rooms listed on major booking sites ÷ total cohort rooms. The hotel set is fixed per stay date (it does not change across LTs for the same stay date, but some hotels differ between stay dates). Because unlisted rooms are counted as absorbed, this estimate runs higher than actual room occupancy; zero remaining rooms means sold out within listed inventory, not that the whole property is full.
• Coverage: 3,853 business hotels / 458,222 rooms across 47 prefectures (major booking site listing basis; cohort total for the September 20 stay date).
- — 180 hotels / 18,613 rooms Business hotels opened January–October 2026, excluding 11 rebrands/conversions. The national new-room ratio against listed stock of 458,222 rooms is 4.1%
- — Saitama 15.5%, Okayama 14.5%, Kumamoto 14.3% 8 prefectures exceed 10%. Tokyo adds 1,128 rooms but only 1.4%: absolute volume and ratio do not line up
- — 35 prefectures at 95%+ On the September 20 holiday peak, most of the 44 compared prefectures were saturated by LT14, so absorption cannot be judged from this single day
- — 7, 8 and 6 prefectures Using the holiday, regular Saturday and weekday conditions, the 21 prefectures are classified as “High at All 3 Dates,” “High at 2 Dates” and “Room to Expand Absorption”
- — Varies from 2 to 14 prefectures The number of prefectures meeting all 3 conditions changes with the thresholds. Aomori and Kochi remain even under the strictest settings; treat the classification as a guide, not a ranking
New-Room Ratio: Saitama 15.5%, Okayama 14.5%, Kumamoto 14.3%; 8 Prefectures Above 10%
Let us start with the numerator. Within the coverage of MetroEngines Research, 191 business hotels with 10 or more rooms (19,906 rooms) were confirmed to have opened nationwide between January and the end of October 2026. Of these, openings that were rebrands of existing hotels or conversions of closed buildings were excluded from new supply because they did not add rooms to the market. These came to 11 hotels / 1,293 rooms, leaving net new openings of 180 hotels / 18,613 rooms (the hotels checked are shown in a table later in this article). The denominator is the business hotel cohort for the September 20 stay date, 458,222 rooms, giving a national new-room ratio of 4.1%.
By prefecture, the ratio varies widely. Saitama added 4 hotels / 928 rooms, 15.5% against a cohort of 5,995 rooms, the thickest in Japan. Behind this is a series of openings of 200+ rooms in several cities in the prefecture: Saitama-Shintoshin, Kumagaya and Tokorozawa. Okayama follows at 14.5% with 3 hotels / 789 rooms, including a 600-room hotel that opened near Okayama Station in August, and Kumamoto at 14.3% with 10 hotels / 1,057 rooms. Kagawa looked like the highest in Japan at 21.7% before the opening types were checked, but 191 rooms in Takamatsu turned out to be a conversion of a business hotel and 91 rooms in Kan-onji a rebrand, so the net addition is 3 hotels / 371 rooms and the ratio falls to 12.4%. Eight prefectures exceed 10%: these four plus Iwate (11.2%), Yamaguchi (11.1%), Tottori (10.7%) and Tochigi (10.1%).
In contrast, Tokyo added 15 hotels / 1,128 rooms, yet its ratio is only 1.4% because the denominator is large at 80,405 rooms. Osaka, too, is at 3.3% against 1,613 rooms opened, so a large absolute volume does not mean a high ratio. The pressure of new rooms reads as relatively stronger in regional prefectures whose stock is in the thousands of rooms. Placing existing rooms in the denominator instead changes the ratios, so the choice of denominator matters when comparing these figures with existing-stock rankings.
Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (OTA listing confirmation basis / estimates on a listed-inventory basis)
September 20, the 5-Day Holiday Peak, Saturated Most Prefectures: A Single Day Cannot Show Absorption
Next, we overlay inventory absorption. For the September 20 (Sunday) stay date, the peak of the 5-day holiday from September 19 (Saturday) to 23 (Wednesday), 35 of the 44 compared prefectures had reached 95% or more estimated occupancy at LT14 (14 days before), and at LT1, the day before, 32 prefectures had reached 99% or more. Yamaguchi was at 99.8% at LT14, Iwate at 99.9% and Okayama at 99.5%: even the prefectures with heavy supply used up almost all of their listed inventory without exception. It would be easy to say from this that “new rooms were absorbed at the peak,” but that hides the difference from prefectures with thin supply. Prefectures with almost no new supply, such as Kyoto and Saga, filled to the same level, so the single holiday-peak day saturates regardless of supply depth and is not proof of absorption.
We therefore took a regular Saturday (October 24) and a weekday (October 21, Wednesday) one month after the holiday, using the same cohort definition. The number of prefectures at 90% or more at LT14 falls to 24 on the regular Saturday, and the number at 80% or more on the weekday falls to 25. Here, even among prefectures with heavy supply, those that fill only on holidays separate from those where absorption extends to weekdays. For example, Saitama was at 94.8% on the peak versus 89.0% on the regular Saturday and 75.0% on the weekday, and Tochigi at 90.7% on the peak, 76.2% on Saturday and 69.2% on the weekday, staying on the low side of the compared prefectures on all three dates. Conversely, Iwate was at 99.9%, 97.2% and 83.0%, and Aomori at 99.9%, 98.5% and 92.6%, filling above 80% even at 14 days before a weekday.
Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (OTA listing confirmation basis / estimates on a listed-inventory basis)
Classification by Three Dates: 7 “High at All 3 Dates,” 8 “High at 2 Dates,” 6 “Room to Expand Absorption”
The 23 prefectures with a new-room ratio of 5% or more (21 compared) were classified by how many of three LT14 estimated-occupancy conditions they met: peak 95% or more, regular Saturday 90% or more, weekday 80% or more. Prefectures meeting all three conditions are called “High at All 3 Dates,” those meeting two “High at 2 Dates,” and those meeting one or none “Room to Expand Absorption.” The thresholds were set by looking at the distribution of the 44 compared prefectures. Regular Saturday 90% and weekday 80% are levels reached by just over half (24 and 25 prefectures), while holiday 95% is reached by 35, so the holiday condition is close to a minimum cutoff.
As a result, seven prefectures were high at all three dates: Kumamoto, Iwate, Ehime, Shimane, Aomori, Kochi and Hyogo. Kumamoto took 10 hotels / 1,057 rooms, the 4th-largest volume of new rooms in Japan, yet absorption reached 81.6% at weekday LT14. Iwate received 11.2% supply from a succession of openings around Kitakami Station, but stayed high on all three dates, at 97.2% at regular-Saturday LT14 and 83.0% even on the weekday, and can be positioned as a prefecture with deep absorption capacity. Aomori, Kochi, Shimane, Ehime and Hyogo also exceeded 80% through the weekday. Note, however, that these are observations of three dates in a single year, not a before-and-after comparison of the supply increase. How Kumamoto’s new supply showed up on the rate side is examined in depth inKumamoto Business Hotels Absorb 1,619 New Rooms: ADR Holds at +2.5%.
The eight prefectures high at two dates split into two groups depending on which condition they missed. Yamaguchi, Tottori and Fukui met the holiday and regular-Saturday conditions, but weekday LT14 fell below 80% (Yamaguchi 77.8%, Fukui 79.5%, Tottori 70.6%). For these, the depth of weekday demand is the next point to watch. The other five, Okayama, Akita, Hiroshima, Hokkaido and Yamagata, met the holiday and weekday conditions, but the regular Saturday did not reach 90% (Okayama 86.5%, Akita 84.0%, Hiroshima 88.9%, Hokkaido 86.7%, Yamagata 88.2%). Weekdays were above 80%, so in this schedule the slack was on the weekend side.
The six prefectures with room to expand absorption are Saitama, Kagawa, Tochigi, Nagasaki, Gunma and Chiba. Saitama received 15.5% supply and met none of the three conditions, and Tochigi, with 10.1% supply, ran at 90.7% at peak LT14 and 69.2% on the weekday. Both prefectures, however, filled to 95.3% and 90.4% by LT1, so absorption progresses through last-minute bookings. The slack at 14 days before is best read as room to deepen early booking demand, in other words room to further expand the capacity to absorb new rooms. Nagasaki was high at weekday LT14 at 95.7%, but its regular Saturday was 85.8%, missing that condition. The weekday strength may include single-day factors, and the day-of-week demand mix cannot be judged from this one day alone.
| Prefecture | New rooms | Cohort rooms | New-room ratio | 9/20 LT14 | 10/24 LT14 | 10/21 LT14 | 9/20 LT1 | Classification | Hotels covered |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saitama | 928 | 5,995 | 15.5% | 94.8% | 89.0% | 75.0% | 95.3% | Room to Expand Absorption | 62 |
| Okayama | 789 | 5,423 | 14.5% | 99.5% | 86.5% | 81.5% | 99.9% | High at 2 Dates | 46 |
| Kumamoto | 1,057 | 7,386 | 14.3% | 98.1% | 90.1% | 81.6% | 99.5% | High at All 3 Dates | 61 |
| Kagawa | 371 | 3,003 | 12.4% | 99.8% | 82.0% | 72.4% | 99.8% | Room to Expand Absorption | 43 |
| Iwate | 545 | 4,868 | 11.2% | 99.9% | 97.2% | 83.0% | 99.2% | High at All 3 Dates | 34 |
| Yamaguchi | 438 | 3,960 | 11.1% | 99.8% | 92.2% | 77.8% | 100.0% | High at 2 Dates | 39 |
| Tottori | 277 | 2,589 | 10.7% | 100.0% | 92.0% | 70.6% | 100.0% | High at 2 Dates | 24 |
| Tochigi | 535 | 5,281 | 10.1% | 90.7% | 76.2% | 69.2% | 90.4% | Room to Expand Absorption | 62 |
| Nagasaki | 397 | 4,427 | 9.0% | 90.8% | 85.8% | 95.7% | 99.7% | Room to Expand Absorption | 57 |
| Akita | 161 | 1,857 | 8.7% | 100.0% | 84.0% | 85.3% | 100.0% | High at 2 Dates | 23 |
| Ehime | 449 | 5,306 | 8.5% | 100.0% | 92.0% | 80.9% | 100.0% | High at All 3 Dates | 51 |
| Gunma | 338 | 4,688 | 7.2% | 97.1% | 88.7% | 77.7% | 95.5% | Room to Expand Absorption | 50 |
| Shimane | 243 | 3,439 | 7.1% | 99.6% | 93.8% | 84.4% | 100.0% | High at All 3 Dates | 31 |
| Tokushima | 144 | 2,025 | 7.1% | 100.0% | 85.7% | 99.4% | 100.0% | Reference only | 24 |
| Aomori | 336 | 4,835 | 6.9% | 99.9% | 98.5% | 92.6% | 99.8% | High at All 3 Dates | 40 |
| Fukui | 152 | 2,249 | 6.8% | 100.0% | 92.9% | 79.5% | 99.9% | High at 2 Dates | 20 |
| Hiroshima | 733 | 11,085 | 6.6% | 99.9% | 88.9% | 85.3% | 100.0% | High at 2 Dates | 93 |
| Kochi | 209 | 3,271 | 6.4% | 100.0% | 98.7% | 87.3% | 100.0% | High at All 3 Dates | 33 |
| Chiba | 587 | 10,541 | 5.6% | 95.1% | 83.7% | 76.7% | 93.6% | Room to Expand Absorption | 90 |
| Hokkaido | 1,456 | 26,518 | 5.5% | 95.5% | 86.7% | 87.7% | 97.8% | High at 2 Dates | 227 |
| Hyogo | 485 | 8,985 | 5.4% | 99.0% | 91.8% | 88.6% | 100.0% | High at All 3 Dates | 76 |
| Yamagata | 104 | 2,025 | 5.1% | 100.0% | 88.2% | 81.7% | 99.5% | High at 2 Dates | 23 |
| Ibaraki | 340 | 6,715 | 5.1% | 65.9% | 79.8% | 70.8% | 67.1% | Reference only | 84 |
The 23 prefectures with a new-room ratio of 5% or more. Estimated occupancy is on a listed-inventory basis. “Reference only” prefectures are excluded from the classification for the reasons given below (Kagoshima, treated the same way, is not in this table because its ratio is 2.7%). Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (OTA listing confirmation basis / estimates on a listed-inventory basis)
This classification depends on where the thresholds are set. Holding the holiday condition (95%) fixed and moving the regular-Saturday and weekday thresholds, the number of prefectures meeting all three conditions ranges from 2 to 14. Of the seven under the standard setting, raising the weekday threshold to 85% leaves only Aomori, Kochi and Hyogo, since Kumamoto, Iwate, Ehime and Shimane sit in the low 80s on weekdays. Raising the regular Saturday to 95% as well leaves only Aomori and Kochi. The classification is best read as a guide, not a ranking.
| LT14 threshold | Weekday ≥75% | Weekday ≥80% | Weekday ≥85% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular Saturday ≥85% | 14 prefectures | 11 prefectures | 5 prefectures |
| Regular Saturday ≥90% | 9 prefectures | 7 prefectures | 3 prefectures |
| Regular Saturday ≥95% | 3 prefectures | 3 prefectures | 2 prefectures |
N=21 prefectures; stay dates September 20, October 21 and October 24, 2026, at LT14. Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (estimates on a listed-inventory basis)
Plotting the new-room ratio on the horizontal axis and estimated occupancy at LT14 for the regular Saturday (October 24) on the vertical axis reveals the shape of the distribution. The upper right (ratio 5%+ and 90%+) holds Yamaguchi, Iwate, Tottori, Ehime, Shimane, Aomori, Fukui, Kochi, Hyogo and Kumamoto, while the lower right (high ratio but below 90%) holds Saitama, Tochigi, Kagawa, Gunma and Chiba, plus Okayama, Akita, Hiroshima, Hokkaido, Yamagata and Nagasaki. Prefectures on the left with ratios below 5% are widely scattered vertically: thin supply does not guarantee fast absorption either.
Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting (OTA listing confirmation basis / estimates on a listed-inventory basis)
Booking Curves for Yamaguchi and Tochigi: Same 10%+ Supply, Different Absorption Speed
We line up the curves of two prefectures with similar supply depth. Yamaguchi (39 hotels / 3,960 rooms covered, major booking site listing basis) rose from 76.9% at LT45 for the September 20 stay date to 99.8% at LT14 and 100.0% at LT1: holiday bookings came in at a fairly early stage. The regular Saturday (October 24) also reached 92.2% at LT14. The weekday (October 21) was 58.5% at LT45, 77.8% at LT14 and 96.1% at LT1, a shape with heavy last-minute pickup.
Tochigi (62 hotels / 5,281 rooms covered, same basis) was at 55.7% at LT45, 90.7% at LT14 and 90.4% at LT1 for the September 20 stay date. The regular Saturday was 76.2% at LT14 and 89.7% at LT1, and the weekday 69.2% at LT14 and 94.0% at LT1, so on every date final absorption reaches around 90%. Comparing the regular Saturday and the weekday, the gap between the two prefectures narrows from 16.0pt and 8.6pt at LT14 to 4.2pt and 2.1pt at LT1. The core of the gap lies less in the final level than in how early bookings build up by 14 days before. These three dates alone cannot establish causality with new rooms, but in prefectures like Tochigi that fill with last-minute bookings, promotions that deepen early bookings and expanded corporate contracts would be concrete ways to expand absorption capacity (for how to read the pickup from LT45, seeBooking Curves Across 47 Prefectures: +4.1pt Median Pickup from T-45).
Estimated occupancy on a listed-inventory basis, LT45→LT1. Coverage for the September 20 stay date: Yamaguchi 39 hotels / 3,960 rooms, Tochigi 62 hotels / 5,281 rooms; for the two October dates: Yamaguchi 43 hotels / 4,352 rooms, Tochigi 62 hotels / 5,323 rooms (major booking site listing basis). Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting
Supply Depth and Classification on the Map
Circle size shows the new-room ratio and color the classification. Prefectures that received more than 10% supply are scattered from the Setouchi region to northern Kyushu, northern Kanto and northern Tohoku, and the classification differs even within the same regional block. In the Chugoku region, Yamaguchi and Okayama are high at two dates, Tottori is of the same type, and Shimane is high at all three dates.
Circles are placed at prefectural capitals. Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting
Three Prefectures Excluded from Comparison, and Three with No New Openings
Ibaraki and Tokushima (new-room ratio 5% or more) and Kagoshima (2.7%) were excluded from the comparison and treated as reference only. In all three, estimated occupancy at LT45 for the September 20 stay date was below 50% (Ibaraki 22.2%, Kagoshima 23.9%, Tokushima 42.0%), so listed allotments build up later than in most prefectures, which sit in the 60–90% range. In prefectures where allotments are added after 45 days before the stay date, the same LT estimated occupancy does not mean the same thing as elsewhere, so we avoided a mechanical comparison under this article’s three conditions. Kagoshima in particular traces a clearly different curve, at 40.7% even at LT14 for the same date and 41.6% on the October 21 weekday. Supply and demand in these prefectures is better discussed by checking each hotel’s remaining-room trend individually.
In Wakayama, Saga and Nara, no business hotel with 10 or more rooms was confirmed to have opened in 2026. All three did have openings in other segments, however: Saga 6 properties including a 126-room city hotel in Tosu, Nara 4 and Wakayama 1. Zero new business hotels therefore reads not as a gap in observation but as 2026 openings having leaned toward other segments. Applying this article’s three conditions, Saga (95.0%, 97.6%, 92.0%) and Nara (97.1%, 91.5%, 88.8%) meet all of them and are at a level that puts them on the shortlist for next year. Wakayama (98.9%, 88.1%, 77.9%) meets only the holiday condition and cannot be placed alongside them. In all cases the small coverage of 19–32 hotels needs to be discounted.
Checking Opening Types: 11 Rebrands/Conversions (1,293 Rooms) Excluded from New Supply
Opening data include not only new builds but also rebrands of existing hotels and closed buildings reopened under another brand. Since these do not add rooms to the market, they need to be removed from the numerator of the new-room ratio. In this article, opening types were checked against press materials at opening, operator announcements and opening notations on booking sites, and the following 11 hotels were excluded from new supply.
| Prefecture | Hotel | Rooms | Opening type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kagawa | JR Clement Inn Takamatsu Hyogomachi (JRクレメントイン高松兵庫町) | 191 | Conversion of the building of a hotel that operated at 9-9 Hyogomachi, Takamatsu (opened July 2026) |
| Kagawa | Smile Hotel Kan-onji (スマイルホテル観音寺) | 91 | Rebrand of an existing hotel (July 1, 2026) |
| Saitama | APA Hotel Saitama Ageo-Ekimae (アパホテル〈埼玉上尾駅前〉) | 126 | Rebrand / franchise conversion of an existing hotel (June 9, 2026) |
| Tokyo | KOKO HOTEL Ikebukuro (KOKO HOTEL 池袋) | 152 | Rebrand through brand consolidation within the group (February 13, 2026) |
| Fukuoka | KOKO HOTEL Premier Hakata (KOKO HOTEL Premier 博多) | 120 | Rebrand through brand consolidation within the group (February 2026) |
| Osaka | Hiyori Hotel Flex Osaka Dotonbori (日和ホテルFlex大阪道頓堀) | 53 | Rebrand of an existing hotel (spring 2026) |
| Fukushima | APA Hotel Fukushima-Eki-Higashi (アパホテル〈福島駅東〉) | 83 | Rebrand opening after full renovation of an existing building (February 2026) |
| Saitama | Hotel Global View Urawa (ホテルグローバルビュー浦和) | 140 | Rebrand of an existing hotel (February 2026) |
| Yamaguchi | APA Hotel Yamaguchi Iwakuni-Ekimae-Nishi (アパホテル〈山口岩国駅前西〉) | 150 | Acquisition and conversion of Iwakuni Plaza Hotel (pre-opening June 2026) |
| Yamaguchi | Shimonoseki Osakaya Hotel (下関大坂屋ホテル) | 88 | Reopening at the same address as the closed Tokyo Daiichi Hotel Shimonoseki (February 2026) |
| Okayama | Livemax Seto Ohashi Beach Resort (リブマックス瀬戸大橋ビーチリゾート) | 99 | Reopening of an existing property (reopened May 1, 2026) |
Checked by MetroEngines Research & Consulting from each company’s press materials and booking site listings. Source URLs are listed in the references at the end. Room counts are this article’s tallies and may differ from those in company announcements
Kagawa moved the most with this adjustment, its ratio falling from 21.7% to 12.4%; Yamaguchi went from 17.1% to 11.1%, Saitama from 19.9% to 15.5%, Okayama from 16.4% to 14.5% and Tokyo from 1.6% to 1.4%. A rebrand can change sales channels and price points as the operator changes, and so affect the competitive environment in the trade area, but in terms of total room count it is neutral. When discussing supply depth, it is essential to look at net room additions rather than the number of openings.
Pipeline and Accommodation Statistics: How to Read Next Year
As a guide to the outlook for next year in prefectures with heavy supply, we add information on construction plans. On a building-confirmation-application basis in the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) “Building Construction Statistics,” plans including hotels scheduled for completion from November 2026 onward can be confirmed as 2 projects / 477 rooms in Okayama (including the redevelopment in front of Okayama Station), 1 project / 300 rooms in Tochigi and 1 project / 134 rooms in Iwate. No applicable plans could be confirmed at this point in Saitama, Yamaguchi, Kumamoto, Kagawa or Tottori. *These are based on confirmation applications at the time of research; the number of projects and rooms is expected to increase as further applications are filed, so they should be treated as a lower bound of the confirmed pipeline at this point.
Let us also check the macro demand environment. According to the Japan Tourism Agency’s “Overnight Travel Statistics Survey,” business hotel room occupancy in 2025 was 75.3% (final figure), well above 61.6% for all facility types. In 2026 so far, business hotel occupancy has stayed in the mid-70s: 73.1% in March (74.8% a year earlier), 74.5% in May (75.7%) and 76.3% in August (76.4%) (2026 figures are preliminary; because the survey’s sampling criteria changed from January of that year, year-on-year comparisons are only indicative). However, total guest nights in August were 62.40 million, down 7.2% YoY (Japanese down 5.9%, foreign down 12.0%, second preliminary figures), so summer demand fell below the previous year. The 5-day September holiday covered in this article was a peak that came after this summer dip, and was likely a period in which the difference between prefectures that fill only on holidays and those that fill through weekdays showed up more clearly.
Implications for Developers, Regional Banks and Asset Managers
First, a high new-room ratio in itself does not indicate a heavy supply burden. Some prefectures, like Kumamoto and Iwate, received more than 10% supply yet exceeded 80% at weekday LT14; in these prefectures, inventory absorption stayed high on the three dates observed even with the new rooms added. Prefectures that fill through regular Saturdays and weekdays can be seen as an environment where the next opening can more easily ride on the same absorption base.
Second, the eight prefectures high at two dates call for different measures. In Yamaguchi, Tottori and Fukui, where weekdays fell below 80%, building weekday base demand through travel management companies and corporate contracts can speed up the ramp-up of new hotels, and in first-year revenue plans after opening it would be realistic to plan cash flow on the assumption that weekday bookings come in late. In Okayama, Akita, Hiroshima, Hokkaido and Yamagata, where the regular Saturday fell short of 90%, the issue is how to build early weekend bookings.
Third, Saitama, Tochigi, Kagawa, Nagasaki, Gunma and Chiba, which have room to expand absorption, fill to around 90% by LT1, so the demand itself exists. The slack at 14 days before is an area that can be filled by promotions that encourage early booking and by expanded corporate contracts, and for new entrants, profitability depends on whether they can design sales that do not rely on last-minute demand. When regional banks review projects in these prefectures, they should check not only the post-opening occupancy assumption but also whether the distribution of booking lead times is built into the business plan.
Finally, this article’s classification is based on actual results for three dates and does not represent supply and demand across the year. Some prefectures look different in the autumn foliage season, over the year-end and New Year holidays, or with fiscal-year-end business travel. Updating the three-date classification by season under the same definitions would allow continuous tracking of changes in prefecture-level absorption capacity.
Summary
Business hotels opened in 2026, excluding rebrands and conversions, came to 180 hotels / 18,613 rooms, 4.1% of the 458,222 rooms of listed stock across the 47 prefectures. Ratios are high in prefectures whose stock is in the thousands of rooms, at Saitama 15.5%, Okayama 14.5% and Kumamoto 14.3%, and eight prefectures exceed 10%. On the single September 20 holiday peak, 35 of the 44 compared prefectures reached 95% or more at LT14, saturating regardless of supply depth. Looking at three dates including a regular Saturday and a weekday, the 21 prefectures with supply of 5% or more split into 7 “High at All 3 Dates,” 8 “High at 2 Dates” and 6 “Room to Expand Absorption,” although the line-up shifts with the thresholds. Supply depth and absorption speed do not coincide, and opening and lending decisions need to look at both net room additions and booking lead times.
All 47 Prefectures
| Prefecture | New hotels | New rooms | Cohort rooms | New-room ratio | 9/20 LT14 | 10/24 LT14 | 10/21 LT14 | Hotels covered | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saitama | 4 | 928 | 5,995 | 15.5% | 94.8% | 89.0% | 75.0% | 62 | |
| Okayama | 3 | 789 | 5,423 | 14.5% | 99.5% | 86.5% | 81.5% | 46 | |
| Kumamoto | 10 | 1,057 | 7,386 | 14.3% | 98.1% | 90.1% | 81.6% | 61 | |
| Kagawa | 3 | 371 | 3,003 | 12.4% | 99.8% | 82.0% | 72.4% | 43 | |
| Iwate | 3 | 545 | 4,868 | 11.2% | 99.9% | 97.2% | 83.0% | 34 | |
| Yamaguchi | 3 | 438 | 3,960 | 11.1% | 99.8% | 92.2% | 77.8% | 39 | |
| Tottori | 2 | 277 | 2,589 | 10.7% | 100.0% | 92.0% | 70.6% | 24 | |
| Tochigi | 4 | 535 | 5,281 | 10.1% | 90.7% | 76.2% | 69.2% | 62 | |
| Nagasaki | 5 | 397 | 4,427 | 9.0% | 90.8% | 85.8% | 95.7% | 57 | |
| Akita | 1 | 161 | 1,857 | 8.7% | 100.0% | 84.0% | 85.3% | 23 | |
| Ehime | 3 | 449 | 5,306 | 8.5% | 100.0% | 92.0% | 80.9% | 51 | |
| Gunma | 3 | 338 | 4,688 | 7.2% | 97.1% | 88.7% | 77.7% | 50 | |
| Shimane | 2 | 243 | 3,439 | 7.1% | 99.6% | 93.8% | 84.4% | 31 | |
| Tokushima | 2 | 144 | 2,025 | 7.1% | 100.0% | 85.7% | 99.4% | 24 | Reference only |
| Aomori | 2 | 336 | 4,835 | 6.9% | 99.9% | 98.5% | 92.6% | 40 | |
| Fukui | 1 | 152 | 2,249 | 6.8% | 100.0% | 92.9% | 79.5% | 20 | |
| Hiroshima | 7 | 733 | 11,085 | 6.6% | 99.9% | 88.9% | 85.3% | 93 | |
| Kochi | 1 | 209 | 3,271 | 6.4% | 100.0% | 98.7% | 87.3% | 33 | |
| Chiba | 4 | 587 | 10,541 | 5.6% | 95.1% | 83.7% | 76.7% | 90 | |
| Hokkaido | 12 | 1,456 | 26,518 | 5.5% | 95.5% | 86.7% | 87.7% | 227 | |
| Hyogo | 4 | 485 | 8,985 | 5.4% | 99.0% | 91.8% | 88.6% | 76 | |
| Yamagata | 2 | 104 | 2,025 | 5.1% | 100.0% | 88.2% | 81.7% | 23 | |
| Ibaraki | 4 | 340 | 6,715 | 5.1% | 65.9% | 79.8% | 70.8% | 84 | Reference only |
| Ishikawa | 2 | 447 | 9,353 | 4.8% | 98.1% | 94.2% | 80.3% | 71 | |
| Niigata | 3 | 282 | 5,876 | 4.8% | 97.8% | 90.5% | 70.1% | 49 | |
| Nagano | 3 | 330 | 7,392 | 4.5% | 100.0% | 97.8% | 91.2% | 82 | |
| Gifu | 3 | 260 | 5,903 | 4.4% | 99.8% | 91.0% | 84.2% | 60 | |
| Mie | 2 | 285 | 6,985 | 4.1% | 99.9% | 96.8% | 81.8% | 64 | |
| Miyagi | 5 | 319 | 8,815 | 3.6% | 100.0% | 94.4% | 78.2% | 60 | |
| Osaka | 20 | 1,613 | 48,402 | 3.3% | 86.8% | 88.3% | 70.7% | 293 | |
| Kanagawa | 3 | 499 | 16,401 | 3.0% | 93.1% | 94.9% | 78.4% | 122 | |
| Shizuoka | 3 | 387 | 12,859 | 3.0% | 97.1% | 89.5% | 74.5% | 122 | |
| Kagoshima | 2 | 162 | 6,034 | 2.7% | 40.7% | 81.1% | 41.6% | 76 | Reference only |
| Yamanashi | 2 | 94 | 3,728 | 2.5% | 100.0% | 85.7% | 78.3% | 42 | |
| Toyama | 2 | 104 | 4,489 | 2.3% | 100.0% | 99.6% | 78.5% | 31 | |
| Aichi | 4 | 548 | 24,654 | 2.2% | 99.6% | 86.7% | 88.4% | 173 | |
| Shiga | 2 | 91 | 4,429 | 2.1% | 99.8% | 94.8% | 85.0% | 46 | |
| Fukushima | 2 | 120 | 5,943 | 2.0% | 99.0% | 88.8% | 76.7% | 52 | |
| Fukuoka | 10 | 445 | 22,795 | 2.0% | 90.4% | 97.2% | 84.8% | 176 | |
| Tokyo | 15 | 1,128 | 80,405 | 1.4% | 88.6% | 88.1% | 85.5% | 553 | |
| Miyazaki | 1 | 54 | 3,929 | 1.4% | 89.2% | 93.2% | 65.2% | 42 | |
| Okinawa | 4 | 154 | 12,857 | 1.2% | 87.2% | 89.1% | 86.5% | 136 | |
| Oita | 2 | 37 | 3,621 | 1.0% | 96.1% | 83.9% | 73.8% | 38 | |
| Kyoto | 5 | 180 | 19,892 | 0.9% | 96.2% | 95.2% | 97.2% | 197 | |
| Wakayama | 0 | 0 | 2,408 | 0.0% | 98.9% | 88.1% | 77.9% | 32 | |
| Saga | 0 | 0 | 1,968 | 0.0% | 95.0% | 97.6% | 92.0% | 21 | |
| Nara | 0 | 0 | 2,613 | 0.0% | 97.1% | 91.5% | 88.8% | 22 |
New hotels and new rooms are business hotels with 10+ rooms opened January–October 2026, excluding rebrands and conversions (OTA listing confirmation basis). Estimated occupancy is on a listed-inventory basis at LT14. Source: MetroEngines Research & Consulting
Notes on reading the data:Estimated occupancy in this article is an estimate based on the absorption of inventory listed on major booking sites and differs from actual occupancy of the whole property. Zero remaining rooms indicates sold out within listed inventory and does not mean the property is full or has stopped accepting bookings. New openings are tallied on an OTA listing confirmation basis; because some hotels are listed only after opening, the number of openings in the most recent months may increase. MetroEngines Research tracks approx. 168,000 properties in Japan and analyzes approx. 27,000 properties / approx. 1.26 million rooms confirmed as operating on OTAs; properties not listed on OTAs are not included.
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References & Sources
■ Data sources
MetroEngines Research opening information on an OTA listing confirmation basis (January 1 – October 31, 2026, business hotels with 10+ rooms, N=191 hotels) and prefecture × business hotel booking curves (stay dates September 20, October 21 and October 24, 2026, LT45 to LT1). Plan information is from MLIT “Building Construction Statistics” and macro statistics from the Japan Tourism Agency “Overnight Travel Statistics Survey.”
■ Calculation assumptions
New-room ratio = rooms opened excluding rebrands/conversions (18,613 rooms) ÷ total cohort rooms for the September 20 stay date (458,222 rooms). Classification is based on how many of the LT14 estimated-occupancy conditions (holiday 95%, regular Saturday 90%, weekday 80%) are met; the results of moving the thresholds are shown in the table in the body.
■ Limitations and caveats
Opening types were judged to the extent they could be confirmed from press materials, operator announcements and opening notations on booking sites; openings that could not be confirmed are included as new, so ratios may fall in some prefectures with further checks. Estimated occupancy is on a listed-inventory basis and runs higher than actual room occupancy. The classification is based on observations of three dates in a single year; it is not a before-and-after comparison of the supply increase, nor does it show causality between new rooms and inventory absorption. Some covered hotels differ between stay dates.
■ Market data
- MetroEngines Research & Consulting — Business hotels opened in 2026 (OTA listing confirmation basis, N=191 hotels); prefecture × business hotel booking curves and estimated occupancy on a listed-inventory basis (N=3,853 hotels / 458,222 rooms; stay dates September 20, October 21 and October 24, 2026)
■ Government statistics, public data and demand trends
- Japan Tourism Agency “Overnight Travel Statistics Survey”: September 2026 first preliminary and August second preliminary figures (published October 30, 2026)
- 2025 total guest nights; Osaka tops prefectures in room occupancy at 79%: Overnight Travel Statistics (preliminary) (Travel Voice, March 2, 2026)
- Prepared by MetroEngines Research & Consulting from MLIT “Building Construction Statistics” (plan information on a confirmation-application basis)
- Japan Tourism Agency “Overnight Travel Statistics Survey” time-series tables (business hotel room occupancy, 2025 final and 2026 preliminary figures)
- Travel search and booking trends for the 2026 Silver Week (Travel Voice, July 7, 2026)
■ News and press releases (checking opening types)
- JR Shikoku opens hotels in Okayama and Takamatsu (KSB Setonaikai Broadcasting)
- Listing information on the closure of Takamatsu Tokyu REI Hotel (9-9 Hyogomachi, Takamatsu, Kagawa) (4travel)
- “Smile Hotel Kan-onji” rebrand opening on July 1, 2026 (PR TIMES)
- Second consecutive opening in Saitama: opening ceremony of APA Hotel Saitama Ageo-Ekimae (PR TIMES, June 2026)
- One of the largest in Okayama, 600 rooms: APA Hotel & Resort Okayama-Eki Shinkansenguchi opens today (PR TIMES, August 6, 2026)
- Hotel Wing International Select Ikebukuro rebranded as “KOKO HOTEL Ikebukuro” (February 13, 2026)
- KOKO HOTELS and Hotel Wing International Unite Under a Single Brand (Business Wire, October 2025)
- First Hiyori Hotel Flex: “Hiyori Hotel Flex Osaka Dotonbori” (press release, February 2026)
- APA Hotel Fukushima-Eki-Higashi opens in February 2026 after full renovation (press release)
- Second in Yamaguchi: APA Hotel Yamaguchi Iwakuni-Ekimae-Nishi pre-opens today (PR TIMES, June 2026)
- Livemax Seto Ohashi Beach Resort reopens after renovation (PR TIMES, 2026)
- Listing information on the closure of Tokyo Daiichi Hotel Shimonoseki (6-2 Akamacho, Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi) (4travel)
- “Rebrand opening February 2026” notation for Hotel Global View Urawa (2-1-19 Takasago, Urawa-ku, Saitama): major booking site listings (checked November 2026)