BUSINESS SERIES ── Part 7 (Bonus)
Last time we talked about the direction of guest communication, looking at Airbnb-style hospitality through the 5 hospitality types of accommodation. This time, building on that, we want to think more concretely about "what language do you use with guests."
This is a topic we still don't have the answer to ourselves. It's a space where we keep wondering "is this the right way?" "is there a better way?" while running operations day to day, so this piece is less about presenting a conclusion and more about sharing where we are now and thinking through it together.
Airbnb has translation on by default
People don't notice this often, but Airbnb's messaging has translation turned on by default. Write in Japanese, an English speaker gets the English alongside it; write in English, a Japanese speaker gets the Japanese.
And this isn't just a host-side feature. When we travel and stay at Airbnbs as guests, the same design applies. A Spanish host writes a message in Spanish, and we receive it translated into Japanese. We reply in Japanese, and the host's screen shows it in Spanish.
Not the host's language, not the guest's language, not English — each side reads in their own native language. This is the premise of Airbnb's platform design, and it aligns well with the idea we wrote about in Part 6: respecting the local air and the personal warmth of the host.
How many native English speakers are there, really?
A small detour: distinguishing "native English speakers" from "people who can use English without it being their native language" expands your view.
Even in English-speaking countries like the US and UK, a substantial share of the population doesn't have English as their first language. Many live their daily life in Spanish or Chinese; English is positioned as the "official language" they use at work or with the government. Globally, native English speakers are a bit over 10% of the population, and even including non-native users, English speakers aren't the majority.
The premise "international guest = respond in English" is slightly out of step with this reality. Going through English may itself be an extra step for the guest.
We've lived overseas and worked in English at points, but even so, when we travel, having local English menus or tourist info translated into Japanese is overwhelmingly easier. We're not on a trip to study English — we just want to enjoy the place. That's probably true for most guests too.
If you're not on a hotel standard, English isn't necessarily a must
Tying this to Part 6: how you handle language depends on the mold your property aims for.
For hotels and resorts that aim to deliver a globally consistent service quality, standardizing on English as the protocol makes sense. The model is "professional baseline guarantee," and a common language helps the operation move smoothly.
If you're aiming for the Airbnb-style mold, the necessity of standardizing on English is, in fact, weaker. Write plainly in Japanese and let translation do the work. If "the host's warmth" comes through that way, that fits the worldview better.
The premise "I can't accept international guests because I don't speak English" is built on a hotel-style baseline. On Airbnb's terrain, it doesn't necessarily hold.
On 24/7 response — the difference between a hotel and "someone's home"
Many management companies sell "24/7 multilingual support" as a feature. Connecting back to the three-party structure in Part 4: for the management company, this is an easy-to-pitch selling point and often a deciding factor in winning contracts.
That said, when you look at Airbnb's platform, you see a quietly intentional design. Host profiles show the host's local time, and when you're about to send a message, the platform implicitly tells you "the host is currently asleep" or "responses may be delayed." A communication design that doesn't assume "instant 24/7 reply" is built in from the start.
This is where guest preparation differs between hotel-style service and Airbnb-style hospitality. Going to the front desk in the middle of the night with a problem only to find no one there — that's frustrating, fairly. But if you're staying in someone's home and you wake the host in the middle of the night for a minor matter, even when handled politely, you start to feel apologetic. The same "after-hours response" carries a different meaning depending on context.
24/7 multilingual support is real value. But whether it fits the Airbnb worldview is worth thinking about separately.
Our language stack
For reference, our current state, candidly.
The two of us, the core members of Yuka-Han, can handle Japanese, Chinese, and English. With these three languages, we can ourselves judge translation errors and nuances, so we can put our own eyes on the final check. That's been a strength.
Spanish and French we understand at a partial level. Greetings and simple exchanges we can pick up, but for involved messages, we can't reliably judge whether the output of a translation is correct. So we don't use these two languages on the front line of message communication. Even if other team members spoke them, since we can't judge accuracy, the situation isn't one in which reliable communication is guaranteed — that's our framing.
Listing many "supported languages" looks attractive in marketing terms, but we feel that not stretching beyond the range where reliable communication is possible ends up protecting the guest experience.
Translation tools: capable, with quirks
The translation engine built into Airbnb is, in our daily use, very capable. Whether because it's optimized for travel and lodging contexts, exchanges around check-in info, sightseeing questions, and stay rules come through in translations that read almost without friction. For this use case, we often feel its precision is higher than general-purpose tools.
That said, AI-driven, semantic-style translation has its own quirks. Because it's not literal — it produces natural translations through deep learning's contextual interpretation — what you wrote can shift slightly via the AI's completion or rephrasing. Even with the same Japanese, changing how you end the sentence can noticeably change the temperature of the translated English.
Aware of this, we lean on what's called "easy Japanese" (yasashii nihongo): make the subject explicit, keep sentences short, avoid implicit phrasing. A small shift in writer-side awareness changes the stability of the translated output completely. It's probably a higher-ROI investment than studying English.
How we currently split it
The current operational rule for message handling, for reference.
Right now, for guests we expect to speak Romance languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian) or Germanic languages (English, German, Dutch, etc.), we reply in English. Translations within the same language family are accurate, so sending in English is read at near-equivalent precision.
For guests speaking Asian languages (Chinese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, etc.), we reply in Japanese. We feel that translation between Asian languages and Japanese, including cultural nuance, is often more accurate than between Asian languages and English. On top of that, the share of guests from Asia who have studied some Japanese tends to be higher than from other regions, and there's a meaningful number who can read Japanese as is.
What we are careful about here is judging the guest's language as accurately as possible. The premise is "match the other side's language," so a misjudgment alone can break the experience. There are plenty of people with Japanese-style names whose first language isn't Japanese, and the reverse. If the first message arrives in English, reply in English — that simple, really.
Han's experience — language choice, and language as a communication tool
Let me insert a personal note. The author of this column, Han, was born in China and grew up mostly in Japan, so my first language is Japanese. Most of my Chinese reading, writing, and conversation I picked up by re-learning the language from university onward. I studied science in college, but my strongest subjects were always Japanese, social studies, and English.
With that as a starting point, when I speak Japanese at hotels and counters in Japan, my surname being Chinese-style means I'm often answered in English or Chinese. Being praised "your Japanese is so good" has happened more than once or twice. I know there's no ill intent, and the person is being kind.
But honestly, as a guest experience, it's not exactly comfortable.
I'm writing this not so much to vent as to point out that "language choice in communication" as a concept doesn't really exist in Japanese service culture. The premise tends to be "Japanese for Japanese, English for foreigners," and the step in between — "what is the most natural language for this person?" — is missing.
Another thing I think is missing: handling language flexibly as a tool of communication. In Japan, "speaking English" tends to mean aiming for perfection — grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, idioms. But if the listener is non-native, near-native English can actually be harder to follow.
Speaking with a Spanish speaker, you can drop the L/R distinction and lean toward a Japanese-pronunciation English, and you'll be understood more easily. With British or New Zealand speakers, "lift" works better than "elevator." With Asian guests, sometimes saying "Chiba-ken" the way it's pronounced rather than "Chiba Prefecture" lands better. With guests who've studied some Japanese, mixing in Japanese words while you speak is also effective.
Choose "words the listener will understand" over "near-native English." Getting through, not perfection. Treating language as a communication tool means this kind of flexibility.
For vacation rental and Airbnb operations, this is something we want to be intentional about. Don't judge by the name. Match the language of the first message. Tune your English to the guest's English level. The accumulation of these small choices builds the quality of guest experience.
Greetings, on-site response, and emergency messages
A bit on situations beyond text messaging.
For us, face-to-face moments with guests are when we drop in to say hello during a stay, or when something goes wrong and we go on-site. In these real-time situations, being able to speak English and Chinese expands the range of response considerably.
Especially with guests from Asian regions, it's not unusual for groups to include someone who speaks neither English nor Japanese, but where one person speaks Chinese conversationally. When we can speak Chinese back at moments like that, the sense of reassurance for the whole group changes significantly.
For text messages in emergencies, we've chosen Japanese. When the water heater stops or a key won't open the door, getting hung up on subtle English word choices delays the reply — typing fast in Japanese and going through translation gets information to the guest faster. It's a speed-vs-precision tradeoff, and in emergencies we prioritize speed.
"Text via translation, in-person and on-site in the foreign language, emergencies in Japanese" — this is roughly where we've landed for now.
A small experience as guests at overseas Airbnbs
One last note, from staying as guests rather than hosting.
Staying at Airbnbs in Spain and Switzerland, we had several cases where the host barely spoke English. Even so, messages came through fine when both sides wrote in their native language and let translation handle it, and in-person exchanges worked with gestures, simple words, and smiles. We didn't have any real trouble.
That said, this might just be because we're travel-comfortable and tolerant of communication gaps. Not every guest will find the same situation comfortable, so we want to make conscious choices that match our property's guest mix.
In closing — having English expands the range of hosting
One thing we don't want to be misread.
If you took everything above and concluded "so we don't need English," that's not what we mean.
From a hosting perspective, being able to speak English broadens the small-talk side of guest exchanges. You can share local recommendations on the spot, exchange a small joke, hear the live impression of a stay. The "anticipatory response to guests who want communication" we wrote about in Part 6 — when you can do English, you can deliver it at the tempo of the conversation itself, not via translation.
Whether you can do English directly affects how many opportunities for guest experience you can hold. "Operations run fine without English" and "having English broadens the range of hosting" coexist. We see it that way.
So — on the optimal answer for handling languages, we ourselves are still feeling our way. If you have insights or approaches that work, we'd genuinely like to hear them. This is a topic we want to keep thinking through together.
Next time, the final installment of the series, we'll deliver a recap. We'll touch lightly on RevPAR as a metric, but RevPAR is a secondary metric used more for analyzing operational state than for setting strategy, so the recap will lean into a retrospective of the discussions we've had so far.