Sarah Takeda thought she had a good little business renting a traditional tatami-mat room in her house on Airbnb.
However, she and other hosts in Japan are learning the hard way that the home-sharing site’s fastest-growing market is also becoming the next flashpoint in a global battle over the sharing economy.
Hoteliers are up in arms, local residents complain that outsiders are invading their neighborhoods and Japanese officials say renting out private homes is illegal.
Photo: AFP
Calls for change have reached the highest levels of government, which is mulling a revision to the rules, as Japan’s tourist numbers hit fresh records and Tokyo scrambles to build enough accommodation to host the 2020 Olympics.
However, Takeda’s hosting days are over, after local officials knocked on the door of her home in a quaint seaside town near the capital.
They quizzed her on minute details of the business, such as asking how she cleaned sheets for guest futons, Takeda said.
She was later threatened with a ¥30,000 (US$280) fine or six months in jail if she kept renting.
“I had no idea Airbnb was against the law when I was running it,” said Takeda, a pseudonym, who has since stopped renting the straw mat room for about ¥3,000 a night. “They said some of the neighbors had commented that many foreigners were coming to our house.”
Japan is not alone in the complaints. Fights over Airbnb have erupted in Spain, France, Germany and even in San Francisco, where the company is based, largely over rising real-estate prices and noise complaints.
Still, Japan is particularly fertile territory for home sharing, with visitor numbers soaring as a drop in the yen makes a once-notoriously expensive country a bit more affordable.
Last year, Japan drew about 19.7 million visitors, up 47 percent from a year earlier, straining hotel occupancy rates and highlighting Tokyo’s accommodation problem.
However, the hotel industry has been cool on the idea of unregulated players filling the gap.
“If ryokans [traditional inns] and hotels operate under the same regulations [as Airbnb hosts] and then we lose, I could accept it,” Japan Ryokan & Hotel Association chairman Satoru Haritani said. “But if one industry is regulated and the other is not, and we have to compete under different rules, then that kind of situation would be nothing but unfair.”
The Japanese Ministry of Health, which oversees the hospitality sector, insists for-profit home sharing is still illegal under a nearly 70-year-old law — although enforcement can be patchy.
“Naturally, if there are signs of illegal activity … there could be penalties,” said a ministry official, who asked not to be named.
For its part, Airbnb said it tells hosts to check local laws, but pointed to a clash between the old and new economy.
“We often hear from many hosts that the current laws governing home sharing are unclear and difficult to understand. In fact, in some cases, they were written long before the Internet even existed,” it said in a written response to questions.
Clarity may come from above as the government mulls letting homeowners rent out their place for up to 180 days a year, and in exclusively residential areas, local media said.
The record numbers have created an untenable situation for bustling Tokyo, said Lauren, who rents out a pair of apartments at a family-owned building in a posh neighborhood.
There are “lots of people who want to come to Japan,” she said of the accommodation squeeze. “Where should those people stay? What sort of standard should be put in place?”
Some hosts are not waiting on the legislature.
Instead, they are taking matters into their own hands by suggesting travelers, such as 27-year-old Australian tourist Thomas Jurkiewicz, be creative with the truth.
There was a “little placard on the wall near the entrance that says if someone knocks on your door, do not say it’s an Airbnb — say you are staying with your friend,” Jurkiewicz said of a recent Tokyo rental.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”