The report that Booking.com, one of the world’s leading travel booking sites, is brokering unauthorized ‘white taxis’—an illegal service within Japan—has sent shockwaves through the business ahead of the deregulation of rideshare services.
Booking.com has been recognized among users as a problematic site for several issues in recent months, including unpaid bills to accommodations in Japan, and globally, the exposure of credit card information due to unauthorized access to their system. The Travel Service Act seems unable to be applied to foreign corporations, posing limitations for the law. As such, the supervisory authority appears to grapple with how to deal with these problems.
The issue of ‘white taxis’ at airports has been reported increasingly since around 2018, with the rise of Chinese tourists. It was primarily used by Chinese tourists who would pay the fare before their trip, and drivers often claimed to be driving ‘friends’ which made enforcement difficult.
The fact that a major travel booking site like Booking.com is brokering reservations for ‘white taxis’ is uniformly deemed unthinkable by travel industry professionals. When actually booking and using one of these taxis, insights could be gained into their operation which appears to be both mechanical and organized.
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This article was generated using automatic translation by GPT-4 API. The translation may not be accurate.
