Airbnb said on Thursday it’s been forced to cancel thousands of bookings in Japan after the government unexpectedly announced the immediate implementation of a law that regulates home sharing. It’s created a fund to cover customers’ costs of finding last-minute hotel reservations. Japan last year made home-sharing legal, but it stipulated that hosts must register their home-share with the local authority and put their registration number on their listings by June 15. Airbnb said it had been helping hosts with this licensing process, but on June 1 the Japanese government suddenly announced that any host without a license would have to cancel bookings made before June 15. Airbnb has canceled reservations with arrivals from June 15 to June 19 for any unlicensed listings, and going forward will cancel any reservations for which the host doesn’t have a license within 10 days of the booking.

Source: Huffington Post June 08, 2018 15:56 UTC