In recent years, Japan is regarded as one of the fastest growing tourist destinations in the world. Year in and year out, the Land of the Rising Sun welcomes millions of visitors and travel enthusiasts from different parts of the globe.
Aside from the inbound tourism boom, the country also expects more and more foreign nationals to work in Japanese industries that are suffering from chronic labor shortage as a result of its aging population. In fact, with the latest amendments in Japanese immigration laws, the country hopes to open wider doors of opportunities for more than five hundred thousand foreign nationals by fiscal year 2025.
The tremendous surge of international tourists as well as foreign nationals who work and reside in Japan gave rise to another issue: the shortage of accommodation. In order to address this matter, the Diet or the bicameral legislature of Japan passed a law which legalizes the establishment and administration of private or minpaku lodgings in the country thereby permitting home, apartment and residential condominium owners to allow tourists to stay in their properties for an arranged price.
The passage of said law paved the way for the proliferation of private lodging houses in Japan. Based on the data released by Japan Tourism Agency, these types of accommodation has increased eight times after the law took effect. There have been more than two thousand additional private or minpaku lodgings since June 15, 2018 and this number continued to increase to more than seventeen thousand as of June this year.
One of the reasons for the swift growth in the number of private lodgings is that corporations and firms are now extending its operations into the minpaku business. About fifty percent of the recorded private lodgings are operated by Japanese corporations.
In view of the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, the government of Japan seeks to further enhance tourism growth by addressing the issue on lack of accommodation. The country hopes to welcome more than forty million foreigners by 2020.
Reference: Japan’s private lodgings grow 8-fold in 1 year; half run by businesses
