Ranking Okinawa Prefecture’s municipalities by estimated settled ADR (September 2026, a settled month) shows a 4.2x spread between the top, Nakijin Village at ¥40,438, and the urban tier, Naha City at ¥9,709. Prefecture-wide September ADR was ¥12,040, up 10.0% year on year, but both the size of that rise and the seasonal swing differ sharply by municipality: in Onna Village August ADR is 1.95x January, while in Nago and Naha it is roughly 1.0x. Even within “Okinawa,” the shape of hotel revenue is completely different from place to place. This article takes the 28 of the prefecture’s 41 municipalities for which an estimated settled ADR could be calculated, groups them into four tiers (Northern Resort, Central West Coast, Naha Metro and Outer Islands), and reads the year-round investment hierarchy and the gaps in the price structure from September rates, year-on-year change, hotel counts, the August/January seasonal ratio, occupancy, supply trends and J-REIT holdings.

Note: the hotel count (N) is the number of properties used to calculate estimated settled ADR (validated segments: business, city, resort, ryokan and capsule). Municipalities with N below 5 are treated as reference values. Occupancy figures are shown as “occupancy (OTA listed-inventory basis, estimated)” together with the number of properties and rooms in the sample (based on listings on major booking sites). They are estimates based on how much of the inventory sold on OTAs has been taken up, and differ from each property’s actual total occupancy.

Executive Summary — Four Rate Tiers and Seasonal Patterns Define the Investment Vehicle

The bottom line: in Okinawa, whether a hotel investment works depends less on “which municipality” than on “which tier.” Tier 1 is the small-resort tier above ¥30,000, made up of Nakijin Village (¥40,438) and, as a reference value, Ginoza Village (¥32,728). Its summer-winter swing stays around 1.6x, but the sample is thin at 21 properties. Tier 2 is the ¥20,000 range of Yomitan Village (¥22,553, +24.8%) and Onna Village (¥21,895, +9.2%), a classic seasonal pattern in which August is more than 1.9x January. Tier 3 is the ¥11k-16k band: Chatan Town (¥16,214), Motobu Town (¥15,020), Taketomi Town (¥14,616), Miyakojima City (¥13,450), Ishigaki City (¥11,976) and Nago City (¥11,384). The outer islands here swing strongly by season, while Chatan and Nago swing little. Tier 4 is the urban business tier of Naha City (¥9,709) and Okinawa City (¥7,711), flat across the year with high occupancy of 87.8% (September 2026, OTA inventory basis, estimated).

Against this hierarchy, the investment questions boil down to three. First, in the north there are almost no properties in the calculation sample between Onna Village’s ¥21.9k and Nakijin Village’s ¥40.4k; this ¥23k-40k band is the thinnest price band in the prefecture. Second, 2026 openings in the prefecture total 23 hotels and 2,598 rooms in the hotel segments alone, above the prior year (20 hotels, 1,714 rooms); Miyakojima gained a newly built 306-room resort, and in Naha/Shuri two existing hotels (661 rooms combined) are being rebranded. Third, the seven hotel J-REITs own 13 properties in the prefecture with 3,204 rooms and a combined acquisition price of ¥170,311 million, concentrated in Naha, Ishigaki and Yomitan; in the northern resort tier their only holding is one property in Nago City. We take these in turn below.

Rate Tiers by Municipality — September Est. Settled ADR and YoY Across 28 Municipalities in Four Tiers

Start with the overall hierarchy. MetroEngines Research data yielded a September 2026 estimated settled ADR for 28 municipalities, 15 of which have five or more properties in the calculation sample. The chart below ranks those 15 by rate, with colors showing the four tiers. Nakijin Village stands alone at the top; Yomitan, Onna and Zamami follow in the ¥20,000 range; eight municipalities from Chatan Town to Uruma City line up in the ¥10k-17k band; and Naha City, Kitanakagusuku Village and Okinawa City sit below them.

Year on year, all 15 municipalities are up, with double-digit growth on the urban side of the central and northern areas: Yomitan Village (+24.8%), Uruma City (+22.5%), Ginowan City (+18.7%), Okinawa City (+18.3%) and Nago City (+16.2%). Among the reference values with fewer than five properties, Kin Town (−8.8%), Kumejima Town (−22.1%) and Tomigusuku City (−11.3%) are below the prior year. In municipalities with such small samples, a price change at one or two properties moves the municipal value directly, so these are better read as statistical noise than as a correction. The table below lists all 28 municipalities, adding August and January rates and the August/January ratio as an indicator of seasonality.

A few notes on the character of each tier. In the Northern Resort tier, Nakijin Village has 21 properties in the calculation sample against 156 listed properties; small properties outside the validated segments, such as vacation rentals and cottages, make up most of the listings. In other words, ¥40,438 is the median for villa-type and small resort hotels, not the average of every lodging facility in the village. Onna Village, with 44 properties in the sample, is the deepest in the north, so its ¥21,895 is highly representative. In the Outer Islands tier, Miyakojima City (N=75) and Ishigaki City (N=60) sit in the ¥12.0k-13.5k band and can be read as town-center medians mixing business hotels and resorts. Naha City has the largest sample in the prefecture at 144 properties, and its ¥9,709 serves as the baseline for the urban business tier.

Investment Map — Plotting Rates for 28 Municipalities

The map below overlays the rate hierarchy on geography. Circle size shows September estimated settled ADR and color shows the four tiers; municipalities with fewer than five properties in the sample are drawn faintly. High-rate circles line the west coast of northern Okinawa Island (Onna Village to Motobu Town to Nakijin Village), followed by Yomitan Village and Chatan Town on the central west coast. Circles in the Naha metro area are small, while among the outer islands the town centers of Miyakojima and Ishigaki sit in the middle range and Zamami and Taketomi near the top. That Motobu Town’s commercial land recorded the prefecture’s highest official land-price rise of +22.1% (discussed below) matches the northern cluster on this map.

Seasonality — Resort Tiers Run 1.9x January in August, Naha and Nago Stay Flat

For a year-round view of the investment hierarchy, the seasonal swing matters as much as the rate level. Comparing August, September and January estimated settled ADR across ten major municipalities, the largest swings are in Onna Village (¥16,880 in January to ¥32,961 in August, 1.95x) and Yomitan Village (¥19,696 to ¥37,926, 1.93x), followed by Miyakojima City (1.87x), Ishigaki City (1.68x) and Nakijin Village (1.62x). By contrast, Naha City (1.03x) and Nago City (1.00x) are nearly flat, with Chatan Town (1.24x) and Motobu Town (1.31x) in between.

Splitting the prefecture by segment makes the structure of this gap even clearer. Okinawa’s resort hotels (N=282) were ¥15,057 in January 2026 versus ¥22,291 in August, 1.48x, while business hotels (N=197) were ¥8,918 versus ¥9,734, 1.09x. The chart below plots months on the horizontal axis with years overlaid: the resort segment’s July-August peak repeats in the same position from 2024 through 2026, whereas the business segment is flat throughout the year apart from a small bump in February (¥10,648 in February 2026). Resort ADR in September was ¥16,799 (+7.3% YoY) and business ADR ¥8,835 (+9.4%), so both segments beat the prior year outside the summer peak; 2026 can be described as a year in which the off-season floor rose. Prefecture ADR in January was ¥11,047 (+19.9% YoY) and in February ¥13,596 (+31.0%), making the two winter months the strongest growth months of 2026. Seasonal shapes by segment and how bookings build ahead of long weekends are also covered in our comparison of Okinawa’s resort, city and business segments.

For investors, differences in seasonality translate directly into differences in revenue stability and required yield. Properties of the Onna/Yomitan type earn a large share of annual revenue in the two summer months, which leaves them exposed to external shocks such as typhoons and flight cancellations. Indeed, the prefecture’s preliminary figures put visitor arrivals in September 2026 at 897,700, down 5.4% year on year, attributed to cancellations caused by Typhoons No. 24 and No. 25 (August was also down 14.0% at 923,900). Nago and Naha, on the other hand, have almost identical rates in January and August, a structure in which school trips, business travel and Shuri Castle-related demand fill the winter. One could say that the answer to how to fill the off-season has already been decided by location.

Price-Band White Space — The Northern ¥23k-40k Band Is Nearly Empty in the Sample

Putting this together, the prefecture’s price structure has clearly “thick” and “thin” bands. The positioning map below plots the rooms in the occupancy sample (based on listings on major booking sites) on the horizontal axis and September estimated settled ADR on the vertical axis, with bubble size showing the number of properties in the ADR sample. Naha City (15,059 rooms) sits at the lower right with a large base and a low rate, Nakijin Village (356 rooms) at the upper left with a small base and a high rate, and Onna Village (3,306 rooms, ¥21,895) and Yomitan Village (1,196 rooms, ¥22,553) in the upper middle. Five municipalities (Ishigaki, Miyakojima, Motobu, Chatan and Nago) cluster in the ¥11k-16k band, the most competitive band in the prefecture.

Gap 1 needs a caveat. Nakijin Village’s ¥40,438 is the median of 21 villa-type properties, so the point is not that there are “no” properties in the ¥23k-40k band, only that no municipality has its median there. Onna Village’s 44-property sample does include properties in this band. Even so, given that the rooms in the northern occupancy sample are 3,306 in Onna Village against 356 in Nakijin Village, a gap of nearly 10x, the picture of few properties with 50+ rooms in the ¥23k-40k band in the north holds. The coast from Onna Village to Nago Bay also raises the question of tsunami inundation zones; as previously reported, an estimated 40% of resort rooms there sit in projected inundation zones.

Supply and Demand — September Occupancy: Onna 91.3%, Naha 87.8%, Nakijin 79.3%

We check whether the rate hierarchy matches the strength of demand using occupancy (OTA listed-inventory basis, estimated). Okinawa Prefecture was at 86.7% in September 2026 (708 properties / 36,220 rooms), above August’s 85.5% (713 properties / 36,482 rooms). By municipality, Onna Village was highest at 91.3% (52 properties / 3,306 rooms), followed by Ishigaki City at 89.0%, Motobu Town at 88.3% and Naha City at 87.8%. Nakijin Village was the lowest of the nine at 79.3% (29 properties / 356 rooms), but with only 356 rooms in the sample it is small enough to move several points on how a single property releases inventory, so the figure should be discounted accordingly. A side-by-side with Osaka and Kanagawa for the same September is in our hotel occupancy comparison of Okinawa, Osaka and Yokohama.

What stands out is that Onna Village, with rates in the ¥20,000 range, also tops the occupancy ranking. High rates and high occupancy together suggest that in September Onna had no need to cut prices to fill rooms, and that if anything there is still room on the rate side. Naha City holds 87.8% at a rate of ¥9,709, showing the resilience of urban-tier demand. The guest-room occupancy in the Japan Tourism Agency’s Overnight Travel Statistics Survey and our OTA inventory-based estimates are defined differently; how to read the two is laid out in our earlier article comparing Okinawa occupancy with the official figures.

Supply — Naha’s 3km Radius Added 10,000 Rooms in 9 Years; Miyakojima Stepped Up in 2021 and 2026

On the supply side, we look at room-stock trends in four representative areas. The 3km radius around the Prefectural Office in Naha City grew from 243 properties and 17,141 rooms in 2017 to 440 properties and 27,101 rooms in 2026, adding about 10,000 rooms in nine years. The 3km radius around Hirara Port in Miyakojima City rose 3.3x from 1,222 to 4,078 rooms, with step-ups in 2021 (+779 rooms) and 2026 (+673 rooms). The 3km radius around Ocean Expo Park in Motobu Town grew gradually from 1,049 to 1,460 rooms, and the 3km radius around the Onna Village office jumped to 1,164 rooms in 2018 and has been flat at 1,391 since. Note that Onna Village has a long coastline and only some of its large resorts fall within 3km of the village office, so this series does not represent supply for the village as a whole.

In 2026, 100 properties with 2,941 rooms were newly confirmed as listed on major booking sites in the prefecture, of which the hotel segments (resort, city, business and capsule) accounted for 23 properties and 2,598 rooms, more than 50% above 2025’s 20 properties and 1,714 rooms by room count. The table below shows the 10 openings with 100 or more rooms. They include 306 and 100 rooms in Miyakojima, 209 in Chatan, and 139 and 201 in Onna Village, placing new supply at the top of Tier 3 and in Tier 2. The two Naha/Shuri buildings with 661 rooms are rebrands of existing hotels (the former Novotel Okinawa Naha switched operators in July 2026, and the former DoubleTree by Hilton Naha Shuri Castle is scheduled to switch in January 2027); they are counted because their listing names changed and are not a net increase in rooms. On a construction-confirmation basis, MLIT’s Statistics on Building Construction Starts shows only one plan in the prefecture, a 200-room, 17-storey building in Nishihara 6-chome, Urasoe City (construction started April 2023). This reflects applications as of the survey date, and the number is expected to grow as further applications are filed, so please treat it as a lower bound for the confirmed pipeline.

Individual projects are covered in earlier articles. In the north, a 7-storey, 134-room hotel is scheduled to open in Nakijin Village at the end of October 2028, a 40% increase on the active room stock within 5km. In Nago City, a plan for a 9-storey, 140-room hotel with hot springs on a former fire station site in Agarie is moving ahead. Both projects will indicate whether properties move into the northern ¥23k-40k band at the boundary between Tier 1 and Tier 3, and will shape the future of Gap 1. For redevelopment of former US military sites in central Okinawa Island, see our overview of large-scale development on returned base land.

Location, Land Prices and Policy — Motobu Commercial Land +22.1%, Lodging Tax from February 2027

Land prices underpin the investment hierarchy. In the official land prices (as of January 1) published by MLIT in March 2026, Okinawa’s all-use average rose 6.6% year on year, its 13th consecutive increase and the second highest in Japan after Tokyo. The prefecture’s commercial-land average rose 7.3%, with all 17 surveyed municipalities rising, and Motobu Town’s commercial land posted the prefecture’s highest increase at +22.1%. Naha City rose 6.0% across all uses, and in residential land Miyakojima City posted the largest increase. That commercial land in Motobu Town, home to Ocean Expo Park and a theme park, is the most sought-after in the prefecture is consistent with Tier 3 Motobu Town (¥15,020, +14.3%) also showing double-digit rate growth.

On the policy side, two changes converge in 2027. First, Okinawa Prefecture’s lodging tax will be introduced from February 1, 2027 at a flat 2% (capped at ¥2,000 per guest per night). We have already published estimates of the per-guest, per-night tax by municipality and an overview of the price bands where the ¥2,000 cap applies, so we do not repeat them here. In terms of this article’s tiers, the cap applies only to part of Tier 1; Tier 2 and below bear a burden proportional to the rate. Second, an extension of the investment tax credit for Tourism Zone Development Promotion Areas has been requested in the FY2027 tax reform requests; how it would affect Okinawa hotel investment is discussed in a separate article.

As for the size of demand, Okinawa’s visitor arrivals for calendar 2025 set a new record at 10,755,800 on a preliminary basis (+11.2% year on year), of which 2,835,500 were international visitors. In 2026, August and September fell below the prior year due to typhoons, but September was still the second highest September on record. The theme park that opened in the north in July 2025 as a visitor draw reported about 1 million visitors in its first year, according to the operator, and was reported to have fallen short of its initial target. Behind the double-digit rate growth in Motobu Town and Nago City in 2026, the key factor appears to be not the absolute visitor count but the take-hold of overnight, stay-type demand in the north.

J-REIT Holdings in Okinawa — 13 Properties and 3,204 Rooms Concentrated in Naha, Ishigaki and Yomitan; One Property in Nago in the North

Finally, we map listed hotel REIT holdings onto the municipalities. Of seven REITs (Ichigo Hotel REIT (3463), Invincible Investment Corporation (8963), Nippon Hotel & Residential Investment Corporation (3472), Japan Hotel REIT (8985), Hoshino Resorts REIT (3287), Mori Trust REIT (8961) and Kasumigaseki Hotel REIT (401A)), five own properties in Okinawa Prefecture, totaling 13 properties and 3,204 rooms with a combined acquisition price of ¥170,311 million (ownership master as of October 26, 2026, Japan only). Japan Hotel REIT holds the most with 5 properties and 1,818 rooms: two in Naha City and one each in Yomitan Village, Nago City and Itoman City. Invincible holds two properties in Ishigaki City; Hoshino Resorts REIT holds two in Taketomi Town and one each in Yomitan Village and Naha City; and Kasumigaseki Hotel REIT and Ichigo Hotel REIT each acquired one property in 2025, in Ishigaki City and Miyakojima City respectively.

By municipality, REIT holdings are concentrated in Tier 3 (Ishigaki City, Nago City), Tier 4 (Naha City) and Yomitan Village in Tier 2, with no properties in Nakijin Village (Tier 1) or Onna Village (Tier 2). Onna Village has the largest base of any resort area in the prefecture, with 44 properties in the ADR sample and 3,306 rooms in the occupancy sample, yet has zero REIT holdings; given its record of 91.3% occupancy and a September ADR of ¥21,895, it is the municipality with the most room for the next acquisition candidates to emerge. The 2025 acquisitions by Kasumigaseki Hotel REIT (Ishigaki City, 121 rooms, ¥18,700 million) and Ichigo Hotel REIT (Miyakojima City, 135 rooms, ¥2,300 million) were both town-center properties on outer islands, yet their acquisition prices per room differ sharply at ¥150 million and ¥17 million. It is a good illustration that even within the same Tier 3 on the outer islands, luxury-leaning and business-leaning properties are entirely different investment vehicles.

Investment Implications — Combining Viable ADR by Tier with Seasonal Risk

With all this in mind, we summarize the investment opportunities by tier. Tier 1 (Nakijin Village, above ¥30,000) has a small base of 21 properties in the ADR sample and 356 rooms in the occupancy sample, small enough that supply from a single property moves the municipal value. Adding the 134-room plan for 2028 would raise the active room stock within 5km by 40%, so acquisition and development decisions need to be underwritten on the settled rates of individual properties, not the “village median.” The seasonal ratio of 1.62x is small for a resort tier, which shows that villa-type properties can hold their rates in winter and leaves room for year-round high-rate properties.

Tier 2 (Onna Village and Yomitan Village in the ¥20,000 range) combines rates with occupancy of 91.3% and 85.7% (September 2026, OTA inventory basis, estimated), and there is room to enter Gap 1’s ¥23k-40k band at 50-150 rooms. However, because it is a seasonal pattern in which August exceeds 1.9x January, year-round economics depend on the two summer months, and occupancy assumptions need to price in external risks from typhoons and flight cancellations (for example, setting August-September occupancy 5-10pt more conservatively). Yomitan Village’s +24.8% YoY is the largest increase among municipalities with five or more properties in the sample, and the question is how far rate growth on the central west coast can be assumed to continue.

Tier 3 (the ¥11k-16k band) is the most competitive band. In 2026, the 306-room and 100-room openings in Miyakojima joined the top of this band, while in Naha/Shuri the two rebranded buildings with 661 rooms relaunched as upper-tier brands. Whether they can build a rate layer above the medians of ¥13,450 in Miyakojima City and ¥9,709 in Naha City, respectively, is the point to watch in 2027. Tier 4 (Naha City and Okinawa City) has a seasonal ratio around 1.0x and 87.8% occupancy (same basis, Naha City), making it the most predictable in the prefecture in terms of cash flow. In Naha City, approaches that do not rely on new construction are also emerging, such as 342 rooms supplied by converting existing buildings, suggesting the urban tier is at a stage where yield is created by keeping acquisition prices down.

Common to all tiers is that in 2027, when the lodging tax (February 2027) and rising construction costs coincide, the rate hierarchy will translate directly into differences in absorptive capacity. Tiers 1 and 2 can more easily pass the flat-rate tax on to rates, while Tiers 3 and 4 absorb it through the depth of occupancy. Municipal medians should be treated only as an entry-level guide; in actual decisions, reading the room stock of the surrounding area together with the seasonal pattern of individual properties is likely the shortest route to building year-round economics for hotel investment in Okinawa.

RevPAR Estimates by Tier — Three Scenarios of Seasonal Rate × Occupancy, and Sensitivity

To compare the differences between tiers in revenue per room, we estimated RevPAR in three scenarios by multiplying the estimated settled ADR in the text by occupancy (OTA listed-inventory basis, estimated). The base case uses actual September 2026 values; the upside applies August rates at September occupancy; and the downside applies January rates with occupancy set 10pt more conservatively (the upper end of the “set August-September occupancy 5-10pt more conservatively” assumption above). The upside/downside ratio is 2.19x for Onna Village (¥13,723-¥30,093) but only 1.16x for Naha City (¥7,722-¥8,970). Even within the same “Okinawa,” revenue per room in Tier 2 swings by more than double depending on the season, while Tier 4 swings little but at a lower level; the numbers confirm the tier framework set out in the text.

For Onna Village, representative of Tier 2, the table below shows sensitivity with ADR and occupancy moved on two axes. Actual September RevPAR was ¥19,990; a 10% fall in ADR combined with a 10pt drop in occupancy gives ¥16,021, a decline of about 20%. Conversely, raising ADR by 10% while holding occupancy at the actual level gives ¥21,989, showing that the earlier reading that there was room on the rate side in September depends on keeping any occupancy shortfall within 5pt.

Summary

Estimated settled ADR by municipality in Okinawa Prefecture (September 2026) splits into four tiers from ¥40,438 in Nakijin Village to ¥7,711 in Okinawa City, with the prefecture as a whole at ¥12,040 (+10.0% YoY). In the Northern Resort tier there is a thinly sampled gap between Onna Village at ¥21.9k and Nakijin Village at ¥40.4k, and Yomitan Village on the central west coast posted the strongest growth in the prefecture at +24.8%. Seasonally, August runs about 1.9x January in the resort tiers while Naha and Nago are flat, and occupancy (OTA listed-inventory basis, estimated) of 91.3% in Onna Village and 87.8% in Naha City shows high rates and high occupancy together. On supply, the Naha 3km radius added 10,000 rooms in nine years and Miyakojima grew 3.3x, with 2026 openings in the hotel segments totaling 23 properties and 2,598 rooms. The 13 J-REIT-owned properties in the prefecture (3,204 rooms) are concentrated in Naha, Ishigaki and Yomitan, with none in Onna Village or Nakijin Village. Reading viable ADR and seasonal patterns separately for each tier is the starting point for acquisition and development decisions ahead of the 2027 lodging tax.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Which municipality in Okinawa Prefecture has the highest estimated settled ADR?
A. On settled values for September 2026, Nakijin Village at ¥40,438 (+7.9% YoY, 21 properties in the sample). Including reference values, Ginoza Village follows at ¥32,728, but with only two properties in the sample it should be treated with caution as a representative value for the municipality.

Q. How different is the seasonal swing between the resort and urban tiers?
A. Dividing August 2026 ADR by January ADR gives 1.95x for Onna Village, 1.93x for Yomitan Village and 1.87x for Miyakojima City, versus 1.03x for Naha City and 1.00x for Nago City. Prefecture-wide, resort hotels were 1.48x and business hotels 1.09x.

Q. How many properties are municipal rates based on?
A. The estimated settled ADR sample covers the validated segments of business, city, resort, ryokan and capsule hotels, for example 144 properties in Naha City, 75 in Miyakojima City, 60 in Ishigaki City and 44 in Onna Village. Vacation rentals, guesthouses and similar properties are included in the listed-property counts but not in the calculation sample.

Related Articles

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Source: Hilton, “Company Overview” (updated August 25, 2026)