Wheels Down in Music City

Every so often a city gets handed a set of unrelated headlines that, stacked together, tell one story. Nashville just got three of them in the same twelve months. A federal green light on a longer runway at BNA. A worldwide search interest curve for flying to America sitting near an all time high. And a 174,000 square foot indoor golf course, backed by Korean technology money, choosing West Nashville over New York and Los Angeles for its United States debut.

We manage roughly 190 short term rentals across Middle Tennessee and host about 20,000 reservations a year, so we watch demand signals for a living. This is our read on what those three headlines mean for anyone holding, buying, or building Nashville real estate.

• 25.7M passengers through BNA in 2025, a record.

• 364K international visitors to Nashville in 2025.

• 37.9M Americans playing off course golf.

• 174K square feet of indoor golf coming to The Nations.

The search data says the world still wants to come here

Worldwide Google search interest in "Flight to United States" over twenty years shows two things. The curve has been climbing steadily since 2016, and the last stretch of the series is running at or near the highest levels the term has ever recorded, comparable to the 2011 spike that previously held the record.

Search intent is not a booking. It is something better for our purposes: it is desire measured before it hits a price, a visa queue, or a seat map. People want to fly here. What has been constrained is the how.

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BNA is building the "how"

In June, FOX 17 reported that the Federal Aviation Administration granted the Metro Nashville Airport Authority early approvals in the process of extending a runway at Nashville International. The FAA confirmed it is working with MNAA on planning and a preliminary environmental review of the proposal.

The stated reason for the extension is direct service to Asia. MNAA CEO Doug Kreulen has described a roughly six year build once the environmental study settles the final length, with the runway pushing out over Murfreesboro Pike. The rest of the airport is already moving:

• Central core work at the main entrance began June 1, part of the multibillion dollar expansion program.

• Concourse A is being overhauled to add 16 gates.

• A second terminal is on the board as passenger growth keeps outrunning forecasts.

• BNA served a record 25.7 million passengers in 2025, one of the fastest growing airports in North America, per NCVC research.

A six year runway timeline sounds slow until you price it as an option. The concrete arrives in the early 2030s. The bookings, the group travel, the codeshare itineraries, and the "Nashville is now on the map in Seoul and Tokyo" narrative start moving well before the first widebody touches down.

Nashville has a concentration problem worth solving

Here is the uncomfortable part of the local picture. Nashville hosted about 17 million visitors in 2025 and visitor spending has been running above $11 billion, but international visitation went the other direction.

• Total Nashville visitors, ~17 million. Domestic demand is durable and still setting records.

• International visitors, 364,000. Down about 13.4% year over year.

• Canadian share of international, ~50%. Single market concentration risk, and Canada fell about 20%.

• US inbound arrivals, 68.3 million. Down 5.5% nationally, per U.S. Travel.

Roughly half of Nashville’s international visitors come from one country, and that country pulled back sharply. That is a portfolio problem, not a tourism problem. The fix is the same as it always is: diversify the source markets.

The federal forecast points in a helpful direction. The National Travel and Tourism Office projects total international arrivals to the United States rising 3.2% to 70.5 million in 2026 and climbing about 25% through 2030, with Japanese visitation up 4.5% in 2026, Chinese arrivals up 3.5%, and South Korea growing modestly in 2026 with stronger gains projected later in the decade. U.S. Travel does not expect a full return to 2019 levels until 2029. In other words, Asia is a late cycle recovery with a long runway of its own.

Why golf is the wedge, and why it is Korean

If you want to attract East Asian travelers, you do not lead with a honky tonk. You lead with something they already love and cannot easily get at home. That is golf, and specifically indoor golf.

• Off course golf in the United States hit 37.9 million participants by the end of 2025, a 63% jump over 2019, according to the National Golf Foundation.

• Korea’s screen golf industry is roughly a $1.6 billion market with more than 9,000 venues. GOLFZON alone counts over 13,000 venues worldwide, about 8,700 of them in Korea and only about 160 in the United States.

• The global golf tourism market is valued around $18.0 billion in 2026 and forecast to reach $27.3 billion by 2031, with Asia Pacific the fastest growing region at a projected 9.4% compound annual rate.

• GOLFZON moved its Global Business Division to Virginia in March 2026. The company is not testing the American market. It is relocating to it.

For a Korean or Japanese traveler, walking into a GOLFZON facility in Tennessee is not a novelty. It is a familiar format in an unfamiliar city. That is exactly the kind of comfort anchor that converts a "someday" trip into a booked one.

The asset itself: CityGolf USA, The Nations

In August, CityGolf USA announced its flagship location in Nashville, described as the first full 18 hole indoor golf course in the United States. It is a joint venture between GOLFZON America and Nessie Capital, with Parlay Capital Holdings and the Tennessee Golf Foundation also in the partnership. Tony Graffia Jr. is CEO. Kim Young Chan, GOLFZON’s founder and chairman, pioneered the underlying model.

The specifics that matter to an underwriter

• Footprint: roughly 174,000 to 175,000 square feet, about three football fields, in The Nations in West Nashville.

• Format: sequential, walkable 18 hole play. Full shots into GOLFZON simulator screens, then the screen retracts and players walk onto 18 real synthetic green complexes with actual sand bunkers to finish the hole.

• Duration: about 2.5 hours per round, versus five hours plus at a green grass course.

• Hospitality: chef driven restaurant and bar, halfway houses on the course, three private event suites with a dedicated kitchen and operable walls, a retail pro shop, driving range bays, and a "Play Host" who functions as caddie and server.

• Programming: PGA certified instructors, leagues, and player development, with the Tennessee Golf Foundation providing junior and community pipelines.

• Timing: soft opening and launch targeted for late 2026.

The revenue model

• Founding Membership (capped) — $1,500 enrollment plus $375 per month, rate locked to 2030. Member lounge, 30 day booking window, founder only tee blocks, 4 rounds monthly, 1 guest pass monthly, 15% food and beverage discount, 20% off extra rounds, priority at future locations.

• Public play — $60 to $125 per 18 holes. 22 day booking window, subject to availability. Average round expected under $100.

The proof of concept already exists

GOLFZON runs two CityGolf facilities in China. The Tianjin site opened in September 2024 and logged 9,937 rounds across 2025. Through June 30, 2026, it had already logged 7,623 rounds. That is a facility accelerating in its second full year, not plateauing. CityGolf USA has signaled 10 to 15 major American metros by 2030, with New York and Los Angeles named as future targets.

Read that ordering again.

New York and Los Angeles are the follow on markets. Nashville is the flagship. When international capital picks your city to prove a concept before it proves it in the two largest media markets in the country, that is a statement about where they think the next decade of demand lives.

What this actually means for a Nashville portfolio

We are not in the golf business. We are in the business of putting the right guest in the right home at the right rate. Here is how we are translating this into underwriting.

Demand quality, not just demand volume

• Golf travelers skew toward longer stays, larger group sizes, and higher daily spend than the average bachelorette weekend. Industry data puts the core international golf traveler at ages 35 to 60, and more than half combine golf with sightseeing and dining.

• A 2.5 hour round means a group can play in the morning and still do Broadway, the Ryman, or a distillery tour the same day. That supports multiday itineraries, which supports length of stay.

• Corporate and event suites create midweek demand, which is where most Nashville short term rental portfolios are softest.

Weather stops being a revenue variable

• Nashville loses outdoor golf revenue to January rain and July heat indexes near 110. An indoor course does not.

• That flattens the seasonal curve for nearby lodging. A rainy February Tuesday now has an anchor attraction attached to it.

Geography: West Nashville gets a new center of gravity

• The Nations sits west of the Tennessee State University campus, with Charlotte Avenue as its spine and Sylvan Park, Richland, and West End within easy reach.

• Build ready residential lots in the immediate area have been trading around $175,000, and the neighborhood already carries the industrial building stock that made a 174,000 square foot retrofit possible in the first place.

• Homes within a ten minute drive of the venue gain a searchable, bookable reason to exist in a guest’s itinerary. "Walk to the indoor golf course" is a listing headline that did not exist in Nashville twelve months ago.

One clarification worth making early.

CityGolf Nashville in The Nations is a different business from Nashville City Golf, the boutique downtown simulator club near the Four Seasons that runs Trackman iO technology. Similar names, very different scale and format. Expect to correct that confusion with guests and with owners for the next two years.

Language is the last mile, and we already solved it

Here is the operational gap most Nashville hosts have not thought about yet. A traveler from Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai, or Osaka books a home, lands at BNA, and then needs to figure out the lockbox, the trash day, the thermostat, and where to get a coffee at 6 a.m. because their body clock is thirteen hours off. If every one of those touchpoints is in English only, the review suffers and the rebook never happens.

Our internal operations platform handles guest messaging with real time translation, which means:

• Guests write in their own language and we answer in it. Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, whatever comes through the inbox.

• Arrival instructions, house guides, and local recommendations can be delivered in the guest’s language before they board the plane.

• Our field teams stay in English while the guest experience stays native. No translation burden falls on housekeeping or maintenance.

• Response times stay fast across time zones, which is the single biggest driver of international guest satisfaction.

We are ready for guests from across the pond and across the Pacific. That is not a slogan. It is a system, and it is already running.

The honest risks

We would not send you a memo that only listed the upside.

• Novelty plateau. Off course golf venues can spike and fade as casual players drift back to grass. CityGolf’s counter is real short game practice, leagues, instruction, and player development, which are retention mechanics rather than entertainment mechanics. Watch the membership renewal rate in year two.

• The runway is not built. Six years is the working estimate, the environmental review is preliminary, and federal timelines slip. Direct Asia service is a thesis, not a schedule.

• Inbound recovery is uneven. National forecasts still show real inbound spending well below 2019 in inflation adjusted terms, and several Asian markets are late cycle recoveries sensitive to currency and policy.

• Execution risk on a 174,000 square foot retrofit. Large format destination venues in Nashville have a mixed history. Fountain Square Mall in MetroCenter was almost exactly this size and closed in 1990.

• Supply response. If this works, competitors follow, and the West Nashville lodging premium compresses. Early positioning matters more than perfect positioning.

What we are doing about it

1. Mapping the West Nashville radius. We are identifying which homes in our portfolio sit inside a ten minute drive of The Nations and rewriting their listing positioning ahead of the opening rather than after it.

2. Building golf and group itineraries into our guest guides so a booked round becomes a booked week.

3. Pressure testing rate strategy for the shoulder seasons that an indoor, weather proof attraction is most likely to lift.

4. Expanding multilingual guest content now, so we are not scrambling when the first tour operator group arrives.

5. Talking to owners early. If you own in West Nashville, or you are looking at acquisitions there, this is a conversation worth having before late 2026, not after.

The one sentence version.

Nashville is adding international air capacity, the world’s search behavior says people want to fly here, and the single most recognizable indoor golf brand in Asia just planted its American flag in West Nashville. Those three things point the same direction, and the assets that benefit are the ones you buy before the runway is poured.

Let’s talk. Host Extraordinaires has managed Nashville short term rentals since 2016, with about 190 properties, an in house laundry facility, and a full field team across housekeeping, maintenance, and guest services. If you want to model what this means for a specific address, reach out.

Sources and further reading: FOX 17 Nashville on the BNA runway extension, Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp research, U.S. Travel Association forecasts, National Travel and Tourism Office international visitor forecast, National Golf Foundation, CityGolf USA, GOLFZON, Tennessee Golf Foundation, Nashville International Airport, Google Trends.

This post is informational and reflects publicly reported figures as of August 2026. It is not investment advice, and it is not a recommendation to buy or sell any asset. Projections cited are third party forecasts and may change. Please do your own diligence and speak with your own advisors.