Rakuten to Embark on Minpaku Business

Minpaku may perhaps be new to you but Airbnb may ring a bell - it's a jargon you might interpret as a way of making available private residence for vacation rental, the kind of business the US firm Airbnb is running the world over.

Now, it seems such a business interested Rakuten, so much so that they are reportedly embarking on it as a broker to arrange via the internet vacant private rooms for temporarily taking lodgers. Rakuten will collaborate with a corporate running the real estate information site "Liful Home's" to start a new company to manage Minpaku.

The new company will run a site on the internet to offer Minpaku options for rent that tourists can readily look up. The idea is to cater for growing needs among the tourists from abroad and so far some 24 thousand realtors are party to collecting data.

Minpaku has, however, its own problems and a legislation has just been enacted this month to prevent them. The legislation sets, for example, the ceiling on the length of stay up to 180 days, subject to advance application to the relevant authorities.

Vice President Yoshihisa Yamada of Rakuten told the press in his interview:

"Minpaku promises to be a big business which is expected to grow up to be one of our major business legs."

The largest Minpaku organizer is a US IT enterprise Airbnb, Inc., which offers such vacation rentals in as many as 190 countries across the world. Data show over 3.7million foreign tourists used their services in Japan last year - 2.7 times more than the previous year.

Apart from Rakuten, Apamanshop Holdings Co. and Leopalace21 have announced their plans to embark on the vacation rental business. 

The business is attracting different types of industries as Keiko Electric Railway just opened last February an exclusive mansion in Kamata, Tokyo - the area officially designated as a special district for Minpaku facilities to operate. (Nathan Shiga) 

Source: NHK