AIRBNB OPERATING AGAIN IN JAPAN AFTER A YEAR

AIRBNB says it’s back in business in Japan, a year after stricter homesharing regulations forced it to freeze a major portion of its listings in the country. There were 50 000 listings available in the country, with another 23 000 rooms in hotels and traditional inns known as ryokan, Airbnb said yesterday. That’s compared with 60 000 total in June 2018, when the new home-sharing rules went into effect. While Airbnb is no stranger to clashes with regulators, it had tried a more co-operative approach in Japan. Still, the Tokyo government set a deadline for hosts to register and then in June 2018 forced those who were unregistered to cancel reservations two weeks ahead of that date. Listings plunged by almost 80 percent to just 13 800, the Nikkei newspaper reported at the time. Airbnb is preparing to go public by the end of the year and argues that Japan is an example of how its business model can withstand even the most restrictive regimes. “This shows that we can grow even in those environments,” Nathan Blecharczyk, Airbnb co-founder and chief strategy officer, said in an interview in Tokyo. “There are no more existential questions about Airbnb,” he said. I Bloomberg