As feared the Japanese government is forcing AirBnB to cancel tens of thousands of fully booked and paid reservations. This is the worst possible way the government could have dealt with this issue. 1/ 
The law was only passed in March, but a hard June 15 deadline gave hosts only a few months to get fully licensed and registered before reservations would start getting canceled. 2/
The registration process is incredibly onerous, requiring over a *dozen* official documents from multiple government agencies, several of which are by law not available to foreigners, even if they own homes in Japan. 3/
On top of this, government agencies have been slow-walking the registration process, whether intentionally or because they have been overwhelmed by requests. 4/
In addition, the new law allows local towns and wards to impose any restrictions they wish on AirBnB rentals, and many of them are quite draconian and downright xenophobic. 5/
For example, Tokyo's Bunkyo ward is only allowing AirBnB rentals on weekends, and Shibuya ward will permit AirBnB rentals only during a small handful of school holidays "so children will not meet foreigners on their way to class." 6/
So even if hosts by some miracle manage to get registered, they might *still* see their reservations canceled if they fall afoul of capricious local rules. 7/
For its part, AirBnB is making a horrible situation even worse by not canceling all unregistered host reservations immediately (as the Japanese government recommended). 8/
Instead, AirBnB will follow the letter of the law and wait and see if the host can get registered in time for the reservation's start day. If not, they will cancel the reservation just 10 days before the reservation starts. 9/
AirBnB is portraying this policy as a favor to hosts and guests, but it really just helps them slightly minimize refunds and hold onto the cash float for longer. Almost all of these reservations will get cancelled right before, causing chaos for travelers in Japan. 10/
There will almost certainly be people who overlook an email or simply don't understand the gravity of the situation who find out their reservation has been canceled after they are already in Japan. 11/
In the midst of the extremely busy summer travel season, hotels will be either fully booked or insanely expensive, and tourists will be unexpectedly left with no place to stay. 12/
Even for people who fully understand what's going on, this is still a huge blow. The total cost of our upcoming trip to Japan (already quite high) literally just TRIPLED overnight as our host told us there's no way she can register in time and we hurriedly book hotels instead 13/
The Japanese government has consistently but implausibly maintained that the intentions of this law are to "encourage" and "increase" AirBnB listings ahead of the 2020 Olympics. 14/
But it is clear from the way the law is written and from the actions of national and local government agencies that the real purpose of this law is to pretty much wipe out AirBnB from Japan, or at least render it so tiny as to be invisible to ordinary Japanese. 15/
Most Japanese are not used to hosting even close friends in their homes (let alone strangers!) so the vast majority of AirBnB hosts in Japan are foreigners. This makes the whole concept of AirBnB seem weird and non-Japanese. 16/
People are also not used to seeing foreign tourists in quiet, residential areas, so there is double animosity toward both hosts and guests. 17/
The rise of AirBnB hosting in Japan (even in relatively small numbers compared to most other countries) has caused a huge backlash, and this law and its draconian implementation is responding to that. From a Japanese perspective, the system works. 18/
But at a time with the Japanese government is trying to boost tourism as much as possible to revive a flagging economy and promote the supposedly "unique" Japanese hospitality of "omotenashi" ahead of the 2020 Olympics, this is a terrible look and seems like a huge self-own. 19/
But of course the central "omotenashi" concept of doing things for/to a guest without asking has never actually been about anticipating and meeting the guest's needs but instead is really about imposing the Japanese host's needs and cultural assumptions on the guest. 20/
In that sense, this law's one-sided regulations and rushed, irresponsible implementation are a perfect example of traditional Japanese "omotenashi" in action. 21/
At the very least, the Japanese government should have allowed AirBnB to honor all existing paid reservations and applied the law to banning new reservations going forward. But that would have been too reasonable. 22/
The funny thing is, I'm actually not necessarily a huge fan of AirBnB, and I do believe it should be more regulated, to more fully account for negative externalities. 23/
But suddenly kicking tens of thousands of tourists to the curb and dramatically increasing the cost of a trip they might have carefully calculated and budgeted, saved up for, and already booked, just seem so incredibly unkind. 24/
Update: AirBnB is claiming they have set aside $10 million to reimburse travelers who had reservations canceled the difference in cost between their original AirBnB and alternative accommodations. press.atairbnb.com/supporting-tra…
I'm a little skeptical whether AirBnB is really going to pay me nearly double the cost of my original AirBnB to cover the regular hotels we had to book. We'll see. But if true, I'm happy that AirBnB is taking responsibility for the huge part they had in creating this mess.
