A partnership will see Rakuten Lifull Stay, a newly-launched vacation rental business in Japan, provide property listings from its Vacation Stay service to the Expedia group’s homesharing brand, HomeAway.
By collaborating on listings, customer-acquisition and sales, the two hope to provide a service that is attractive to both property owners and visitors.
“We have seen healthy demand for vacation rentals in Japan from our booking sites across Asia. We hope that this partnership will help us provide travellers to Japan with more accommodation options across a range of property types – from modern apartments to traditional Japanese homes,” said Prashant Kirtane, vice president, HomeAway Asia.
The partnership follows Japan’s passing of a bill that allows homeowners to rent out rooms to tourists for profit, expected to come into effect after January 2018.
Rakuten Lifull Stay also plans to connect to Lifull Home’s Akiya Bank, a platform developed by Lifull that gathers information on unoccupied homes from a database run by local governments. Scheduled for launch this year, the platform will give registered owners of unoccupied homes in regional areas the option of utilising their homes as vacation rental properties.
