How an idea born in France spread to create a new category of rural heritage tourism; shophouse programme under study.

It started out as an idea in France – to fund the renovation of heritage buildings to revitalise heritage tourism in rural areas – an idea that eventually led to the launch of the “Historical Homes” category on Airbnb in May 2022, and which has spread to Asian markets such as Japan and South Korea.

In November 2021, Airbnb announced it would donate more than 5.6 million euros (approximately US$1 million) to the “Heritage and Local Tourism” programme of the Heritage Foundation dedicated to fund the renovation of heritage buildings in rural France. Under this programme, each home owner would receive around US$50,000 to convert their homes and list them on Airbnb or other short term rental platforms.

Steven Liew: “We studied it, thought it would work in markets in Asia where we are also trying to promote rural tourism.”

“We studied it, thought it would work in markets in Asia where we are also trying to promote rural tourism and take pressure off urban zones and copied the programme in Japan and South Korea,” said Steven Liew, Airbnb’s director of public policy for APAC.

Since then, selected “hanok” (Korean traditional house) and old homes in Japan have come under the programme and are listed in the “Hanok” and “Historical Homes” categories (after conversion), which now has around 45,000 listings, the majority of which are in Europe, across Spain, Germany, Italy, France, the UK, and Belgium.

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