In fiscal year 2021, efforts will be made to accelerate collaboration with transportation companies such as railways, airlines, and automobiles, as well as to measure the effects of teleworking through workations and further expand the potential of teleworking.
KabuK Style Inc. (Co-CEOs: Kenji Sunada and Ryo Osera) has been offering “HafH (Home away from Home),” a platform that aims to allow people to live anywhere in the world for a fixed monthly fee since April 2019.
We are pleased to announce that we have achieved our goal, set in February 2020, to expand the number of HafH available locations to 500 cities by the end of March 2021.
As of the end of March 2021, it is now possible to stay at 735 locations in 509 cities (343 in Japan and 166 overseas, including 70 cities in Taiwan) in 36 countries and regions for a fixed fee.
◼︎HafH, which began its service in April 2019 with 53 locations in 35 cities across seven countries, has experienced rapid growth by expanding the number of available cities and facilities at a tremendous speed.
The service has developed into a platform where users can stay anywhere they want, anytime they want.
This month, 95 new locations in 74 cities in Japan and 14 locations in 12 cities overseas were added to the network, bringing the total number of HafH locations to approximately 30,000 rooms in 735 locations across 509 cities worldwide.
As a result, the goal set in February 2020 to expand the number of HafH locations to 500 cities by the end of March 2021 has been achieved as planned. After two years since its launch, HafH has surpassed 500 cities and 700 locations available for use.
Here are the details of the goals for fiscal year 2020:
The plan was to expand the number of available cities to 500 by the end of 2020. This was announced in a press release on February 26, 2020 (https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000034.000039388.html).
For details on the new locations added to the HafH network, please refer to the following link:
In March 2021, HafH announced the addition of new locations that can be used by HafH members. The announcement included details such as JR West Japan tickets being available at a 40% discount, and an expansion of the number of locations available in eligible areas. With these new additions, the number of HafH locations available worldwide has surpassed 500 cities (https://www.hafh.com/topics/10286).
◼︎2021 Plan (1): Accelerating Collaboration with Transportation Companies
HafH not only allows users to stay at hotels and ryokans for a fixed monthly fee but also develops a “comprehensive service that supports a new work style” and has been collaborating with various transportation companies. One of these collaborations is the second demonstration experiment “JR West Japan x Residence and Vacation Subscriptions” announced by KabuK Style and JR West Japan Group on March 17, 2021, where JR West Japan tickets will be approximately 40% off from April to June for three months for HafH members only.
For more details on the demonstration experiment, please see here: “Fixed-rate multi-location residential service ‘HafH’: JR West Japan’s Shinkansen and express trains will be about 40% off for members! The second demonstration experiment will start on April 1 (Thursday)” (Press release on March 17, 2021) https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000046.000039388.html
The dedicated website for the demonstration experiment is here: https://www.hafh.com/lp/jrw/20210317
In the fiscal year 2021, our company will further accelerate demonstration experiments involving not only railways but also air and automobile services, accumulate and verify usage trends data, and develop our fixed-rate housing service into a fixed-rate MaaS service that includes mobility.
◼︎2021 Plan (2) Leading the Workation Market
The size of the “workation” market is predicted to rapidly expand from 699 billion yen in 2020 to 3.622 trillion yen in 2025, according to a survey by Yano Economic Research Institute released on March 24, 2021. However, it has also been pointed out that the bottleneck for workation is “corporate understanding,” and there are many obstacles to be overcome before workation is widely recognized as a new way of working and a lifestyle choice.
As a frontrunner in the workation field, our company plans to tackle the following in the 2021 fiscal year to lead the workation market:
- Demonstrate the contribution of workation to people’s sense of fulfillment and satisfaction based on scientific evidence
- Support workation initiatives in the region to revitalize the local economy
- Implement workation trials for corporations
In the 2020 fiscal year, many companies introduced telework as a result of the spread of COVID-19. It is expected that more companies will allow hybrid work styles that include not only office work, but also remote work.
However, remote work is just a part of telework, and telework allows for a third option, such as cafes, coworking spaces, and accommodations, rather than just the office or home. Whether companies accept this third option or not will be a barrier to the expansion of the workation market, but our company plans to provide evidence, locations, and actual operating methods to overcome this barrier.
◼︎KabuK Style CEO Kenji Sunada’s comment
“I am very happy to have achieved our goal of expanding to 500 cities as planned a year ago, despite the global spread being hindered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the launch of HafH in April 2019, we have steadily shaped our service with the support of many users (neighbors) who share our vision of “expanding the world and changing the way we work” and many facilities that resonate with the new market we are creating.
Amidst the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, our expansion beyond 500 cities to the rest of the world will be put on hold for the time being, and we will focus on developing our travel services in domestic and Asian markets in the 2021 fiscal year.
In addition, we are committed to leading the market in the workation space to further encourage corporate initiatives and the blossoming of telework.
We believe that in the 2021 fiscal year, we will be able to demonstrate a glimpse of how HafH will evolve further. Although the situation is still far from trivial even after the lifting of the state of emergency, we believe that the days of being able to travel around the world with a smile will return, and we will continue to enhance our services to make them even more convenient.”
◼︎As of the end of March 2021, the countries and regions where HafH is available for use
Japan, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Maldives, Laos, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, the United Kingdom, Italy, Estonia, Greece, Georgia, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Malta, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Tanzania, and Morocco.