Also – HafH Spring Invitation Promo starts in celebration of our 3rd anniversary
Despite the difficulties that the travel industry faced during the COVID-19 pandemic last year, it was a period of significant growth for our travel subscription service HafH. Member numbers surpassed 35,000, the number of accommodation facilities surpassed 1,000, and we won Grand Prix (first place) at the “Japan Subscription Business Awards 2021” at the end of last year. To further this growth, and evolve into an even more convenient and accessible travel subscription service, we are announcing the following three projects for HafH in 2022.
The projects for HafH in 2022:
（1）Expand on transportation subscriptions and integrate MaaS (Mobility as a Service) into HafH
（2）Acquisition of partner accommodation facilities outside of Japan, and of overseas customers
（3）Full support for the digitization of accommodation facilities
We are also currently running the HafH Spring Invitation Promo to commemorate HafH’s 3rd anniversary.
◼︎Making travel more accessible and convenient through a “travel subscription”
HafH started operation in April 2019 and has developed into a service that makes traveling Japan and that world easier and more accessible. 2020 and the global COVID-19 pandemic brought limitations on movement, yet saw an increase in the development of remote work.
On the other hand, remote work has come to be seen by many as being the same as “work from home,” with those who’ve adopted remote work as being something that can be done from places outside the home or office still in the minority.
With our mission to “create the infrastructure for a society that accepts diverse values as they are,” we hope to open new doors for people to be exposed to new values, and in the 2022 financial year, we intend to continue to develop HafH into a service that makes travel easier and more convenient, and presents more opportunities for people to come into contact with new and varied values.
Our three plans for the 2022 financial year are as follows.
（1）Expand on transportation subscriptions and integrate MaaS (Mobility as a Service) into HafH
We have conducted a variety of trials in which transportation operators charge a subscription-style monthly fee for transportation fares. One such trial is the “Aviation Subscription Service” trial conducted from August to November 2021 with Japan Airlines Co., Ltd. The aim of the aviation subscription trial was to support new lifestyles, and aid the revitalization of regional areas.
As announced in our recent report “5 effects of an Aviation Subscription Service,” the results of the trial generally proved our hypothesis, and we plan to take the trial to the next step in FY 2022.
We are also exploring potential partnerships with overseas airlines, and once the global pandemic starts to settle down and overseas travel resumes, we hope to create aviation subscription services that include overseas routes too. In FY2022, we will further accelerate our efforts not only with airline services but also with railways and other transportation services, accumulate and verify data on usage trends, etc., and further develop HafH into a fixed-price MaaS provider.
■ Trial details KabuK Style & Japan Airlines Aviation Subscription Service Trial – Entries open from August 1 (July 27, 2021 press release)
https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000050.000039388.html
■ Trial results HafH x JAL “Aviation Subscription Service” Trial Report : 5 Effects of an Aviation Subscription (March 17, 2022 press release)
https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000057.000039388.html
■Dedicated landing page for trial
https://www.hafh.com/lp/jal/index.html
（2）Acquisition of partner accommodation facilities outside of Japan, and of overseas customers
As of March 2022, HafH has access to over 1,000 accommodation facilities both in Japan and also in other countries and regions. With the COVID-19 situation expected to ease this year, we plan to resume our focus on overseas expansion, particularly in Asia, during the 2022 financial year.
More specifically, we are prioritizing the following 4 areas:
- Further expansion in Taiwan – where partner facilities are already available in every region
- Expansion in Hawaii and Guam, etc. – resort areas popular with Japanese tourists.
- Increase variety of accommodation types in SE Asia
- Expansion in South Korea – already a top overseas destination for Japanese travelers
While the majority of HafH members are Japanese (or those living in Japan), there is a HafH member base that’s slowly growing in Taiwan as well. We plan to gradually restart customer acquisition in overseas regions like Taiwan. We also expect overseas members to help increase inbound demand to Japan once the country reopens to foreigner tourists.
（3）Full support for the digitization of accommodation facilities
Even before the global pandemic, the accommodation industry was undergoing major changes due to the decline in group travel, an increase in the FIT market, and a slow progression towards digitization. In the post-COVID era, the accommodation industry is in the midst of a major transformation in regards to operation.
The global pandemic has spurred this transformation into a now-or-never type situation. The implementation of DX (or digital transformation – Introducing digital technology to transform and provide better services to consumers) in the accommodation industry will only accelerate from here.
However, with approximately *65% of small businesses with capital of less than 10 million yen, in an industry that requires large initial capital and has a borrowing dependency of approximately *95%( (borrowings from financial institutions + other borrowings + bonds) ÷ total assets)), the industry as a whole has not been able to take the plunge into DX reform because it was an industry with very limited investment capacity compared to other industries.
- Current Situation and Issues Surrounding Tourism Report (Japan Tourism Agency) https://www.mlit.go.jp/kankocho/iinkai/content/001461732.pdf (Japanese language only)
Based on our experience of facing the issues of many lodging companies through HafH, we plan to release a data-based problem-solving service as a partner of lodging companies in 2022. Based on our experience in dealing with issues faced by many accommodation businesses through HafH, we plan to release a data-based problem-solving service for our partner accommodation facilities in 2022.
◼︎Comment from KabuK Style CEO Kenji Sunada
We launched HafH in April of 2019 as a platform for members to travel the world while they work, and in that first year of launching HafH the global pandemic crushed our plans for going global. A little more than two years later, we are finally beginning to see the easing of restrictions on worldwide travel, and I’m so pleased that the time has come to resume our global expansion.
While travel itself has been heavily restricted the past two years, I feel that the idea of “travel” as a new form of lifestyle, which is difficult to describe with just the word “travel,” is expanding along with the diversification of values.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the world does with this word “travel” in the future. As more people living in Tokyo are staycationing at hotels in Tokyo, enjoying relaxation time from Friday to Monday with their families instead of just on Saturday and Sunday, and using subscription services to decide only that they want to travel somewhere without deciding on an actual destination, I think it’s getting easier to see the signs that “travel” is already evolving into something new.
In 2022, KabuK Style will steadily develop its subscription service to include not only accommodation, but also as a MaaS platform to include transportation, as well as resume expansion into other countries and regions, and expand our range of services for the accommodation industry.
Even as world peace is threatened, we will continue to develop and expand our services, believing that travel enriches our lives, and that it facilitates the acceptance of diverse values in their diversity.