Airbnb Inc. has gone on a charm offensive in Japan, hoping to drum up support as regulators debate whether to clamp down on the startup's rapidly expanding operations.
The world's third-most valuable private startup dispatched high-powered lawyer and political strategist Chris Lehane to lay out how it can buoy a stagnant economy and support the 2020 Olympics. Just last month, co-founder Joe Gebbia was in Tokyo extolling its contributions to entrepreneurship.
The company is hoping to win over hearts and minds in what was its fastest-growing market in 2015, a country experiencing a tourism boom that's in turn constricting hotel room availability. Lehane, the ex-White House crisis manager known as the "master of disaster," recently helped Airbnb defeat a ballot measure seeking to curb its operations in San Francisco. One of his tasks now is to side-step the sort of controversy that has dogged Airbnb in other markets — and anticipate problems unique to Japan.