a start-up offers to stay in a luxury hotel, in exchange for a few hours of work

A Japanese company connects workers who want to travel and employers who lack employees. She will offer you to stay in a hotel for free, but in exchange, you will have to work a little on site.

Are you dreaming of a little break in a luxury hotel at the beach but you can’t afford it? A Japanese start-up has a solution for you. This small business is called Otetsutabi. In Japanese, it is a portmanteau name between “otetsudai” which means “help” and “tabi” which means “journey”. That sums up the concept of helping while traveling. The company offers to connect, on the one hand, workers who want to take a few days away from their usual job but who do not have a lot of financial means. And on the other, hotels, restaurants or even ski resorts which no longer have enough staff to maintain the quality of their service.

Japan is losing nearly a million inhabitants per year due to the collapse in the number of births for decades and companies are no longer able to recruit to replace those retiring. This demographic crisis affects all sectors but particularly service professions such as hotels and restaurants.

To work and stay in a luxury hotel for a few days, you must first go to the Otetsutabi website. There are lots of different offers and you choose a destination based on your availability. Most of the time, participants have four or five days maximum. The offers mainly concern work in hotels, making beds, cleaning rooms or washing in the kitchen.

Paid at minimum hourly wage

But there are also offers to go clean fields, harvest cabbages or sell ski passes in a small resort. Each time, the ad explains the number of hours of work expected of you, it is often four or five hours per day. We also detail the conditions of your accommodation, your room and meals. These benefits are covered by your employer and the job offer also specifies the amount of your salary. This is generally the minimum hourly wage, 1,000 yen per hour, or 6.30 euros.

Otetsutabi explains that there has been an explosion in demand since the end of Covid. Now 48,000 people are on the platform. This is five times more than in 2021. And the number of establishments requesting these vacationing employees has also increased threefold in two years.