Airbnb touts Japan recovery, bolstered by hotel listings

I hope they successfully weeds out the crappy “bnb’s“. Some were just awful!

The demand for rental accommodation is being fueled by cheap flights from Asia to Japan-cheap and cheerful tourists don’t make an economic recovery for Japan

Japan’s strict attitude to companies operating in regulatory grey zones has stymied the growth of “sharing economy” 

In other words - Japan inc. still does everthing it can to protect Japan inc. as the expense of innovation and a fairer distribution of economic activity.

So concrete proof, in case it were ever needed, that AirBnb is not some all-conquering "DISRUPTOR" coming from Silicon Valley with its venture capital to make our lives more wonderful. It is in fact just another online travel agent. It's not Spiderman or Superman or any of the other Avengers, its Yahoo Travel with a different font. The same commission-claiming middleman wine in a new bottle.

It may have had mostly cool vacant bohemian houses on it for the first five minutes, but those listings were soon swamped by purely commercial hotel rooms and short-stay apartments, all furnished according to profit and loss accounts. Now the regulators have caught up, those short-stay apartments need to be licensed.

AirBnb skirts and flaunts laws, takes a large cut, but never takes any responsibility for their thievery. . They flaunted Japan’s laws and left honest hosts hanging. Have they changed? No.

The best reason to completely ban AirBnb in Japan is obvious, as espoused by the chief propagandist.

““Airbnb is leading the industry in terms of compliance,” Airbnb co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Nathan Blecharczyk said.” I would prefer a bed-bug free, clean and comfortable Conrad room anyday.

I live in serviced apartments all over the world and what is going on in Japan is criminal. But like most things in Japan, the consumer is screwed.