株式会社Hotspring
1 known investors
Japanese travel startup operating 'Cocolocala', an online booking service for domestic and overseas trips with LINE chat support.
Also known as cocolocala · Hotspring, Inc. · こころから · ズボラ旅 by こころから
Investors · 1
Company profile
researched Aug 2026株式会社Hotspring (Hotspring, Inc.) is a Tokyo-based travel technology company that plans, develops and operates the online travel booking service 『こころから』 (Cocolocala, cocolocala.jp). The site sells domestic hotel and ryokan stays, rental-car and hotel packages, JR and hotel packages, and domestic air-plus-hotel bundles, as well as overseas products including international air ticket plus hotel combinations and overseas hotels, covering destinations such as Korea, Taiwan, Hawaii, Guam, Thailand and France alongside Japanese regions including Hokkaido, Kyoto, Osaka, Fukuoka and Okinawa. Free membership registration unlocks member-only rates described as more than 10% below listed prices, and the service supports credit card, convenience-store and bank-transfer payment (the latter two carrying a ¥330 fee).
The company combines a self-serve booking system with human assistance: professional staff can help travellers plan and complete bookings over LINE, and Hotspring runs a 「海外旅行あんしんセンター」 (overseas travel support centre) providing traveller support and overseas-travel information. Added features include a cancellation-free policy on many plans, a 《らくらくキャンセル》 offer waiving 100% of overseas-trip cancellation fees for any reason, and, from 2023, an included connectivity service giving 1GB of free internet abroad without renting Wi-Fi or buying a SIM. The company is registered as a travel agency with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (registration No. 2-7574, registered 2018-05-17) and states a vision of "creating a world where anyone can enjoy their ideal trip".
Hotspring's first consumer product was 『ズボラ旅 by こころから』, a LINE-based chat service launched at the end of May 2018 in which staff proposed itineraries and handled bookings for users who supplied only a departure point or a loose wish. It was discontinued on 2020-12-29, with its LINE account merged into the Cocolocala account and its concepts folded into the main booking service.
Founding story
Hotspring was founded in May 2017 by Koya Arikawa, previously a founding member of Peroli, the company behind the women's media property MERY, where he oversaw design and SEO. He chose travel because he judged the large Japanese travel market to be in transition — online booking share was rising while domestic OTAs had not shifted to smartphones and foreign OTAs such as Booking.com and Expedia were gaining share — and because personal interest in travel was needed to sustain a long competitive battle.
Business model
Hotspring operates as an online travel agency (OTA), selling accommodation, air tickets, rental cars, rail packages and related travel products directly to consumers through the Cocolocala website and through staff-assisted booking over LINE, supported by a free membership programme offering discounted member rates.
Revenue derives from consumer travel bookings transacted through Cocolocala (hotels and ryokan, overseas air-plus-hotel packages, rental car and rail packages), with the founder describing the sector's economics as depending heavily on customer-acquisition efficiency versus advertising spend; convenience-store and bank-transfer payments carry a ¥330 handling fee.
Traction
『ズボラ旅』 received more than 4,000 inquiries in a single day shortly after its May 2018 launch, temporarily overwhelming the service, and the earlier web OTA test site exceeded weekly growth benchmarks before being discontinued. A startup database recorded around 20 or fewer employees as of 2026-08-04, and a post-money valuation of ¥2,006 million including potential shares was estimated as of 2021-07-08 at the Series B stage.
Latest developments
In July 2025 Cocolocala and カタレン ran a joint campaign offering overseas travellers discounted one-way chartered rides from within Tokyo to Narita Airport from ¥1,500. The site currently promotes an overseas travel summer sale, free 365-day LINE consultation with staff, the any-reason 100% cancellation-fee waiver, and a campaign marking the first anniversary of Alaska Airlines' Narita–Seattle direct service.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Hotspring is a venture-backed Japanese OTA competing in a market dominated by large domestic players and by international OTAs such as Booking.com and Expedia, positioning Cocolocala between store-based travel agencies' packaged convenience and online booking's flexibility and price; a startup database recorded roughly 20 or fewer employees as of 2026-08-04.
The offering pairs an online booking flow with professional staff who can plan and book over LINE for travellers who have not fixed a destination, adds post-booking overseas support through the 海外旅行あんしんセンター, a 100%-waived cancellation-fee option for overseas trips, and bundled 1GB overseas connectivity requiring no Wi-Fi rental or SIM purchase.
Technology
The service runs on a proprietary booking system that combines selected airlines and accommodation into packages, layered with human customer-success staff working through LINE chat. The company has described chat logs as a core data asset for recommendation, capturing traveller conditions not expressible in search filters, and has pursued selective automation of an initially fully manual operation rather than end-to-end automation.
Go-to-market
Direct-to-consumer via the Cocolocala website and LINE, supported by free member registration and member-only pricing, seasonal sales and feature campaigns, press releases, and joint promotions with partners such as the カタレン chartered-drive service offering discounted rides to Narita Airport.
Japanese leisure travellers booking domestic and outbound overseas trips, including first-time overseas travellers; usage of the earlier chat service spanned people in their twenties through fifties with little skew by age or gender, and the offering targets travellers with vague or unstructured requirements that standard search forms cannot capture.
Geography
Headquartered in Tokyo (Nihonbashi Kabutocho, Chuo-ku, following an earlier Adachi-ku address), selling domestic Japanese travel nationwide and outbound travel to destinations across Asia, Oceania, North America and Europe.
History
The company was incorporated on 2017-05-15 with an initial office in Adachi-ku, Tokyo. From May 2017 it tested a conventional web-based OTA, launching a validation site at the end of 2017 and running it to March 2018; despite growth, management concluded the model could not scale against advertisers with far larger budgets and pivoted to chat. 『ズボラ旅 by こころから』 launched at the end of May 2018 and drew more than 4,000 inquiries in a single day at launch. Partnerships followed with Gardia (convenience-store deferred payment, July 2018) and ecbo (luggage storage, August 2018), a February 2019 relaunch adding transport, activity and restaurant booking, and a December 2019 collaboration with the Lovegraph photo-shoot service. Plan-type travel products went on sale in August 2020, ズボラ旅 was shut down in December 2020, and the company reopened toward overseas travel with the 海外旅行あんしんセンター in December 2021, a business tie-up with Flamingo in March 2022, pre-registration for an overseas booking service in March 2022, and the らくらくキャンセル policy in December 2022. The head office is now in Nihonbashi Kabutocho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo.
Risks & controversies
The company shut down its first flagship product, 『ズボラ旅 by こころから』, on 2020-12-29 after roughly two and a half years. Management has publicly described the difficulty of competing in a Japanese travel market that is not growing overall and where large OTAs can outspend smaller entrants on advertising, and where metasearch-driven price competition can compress margins; the earlier chat model relied on manual human operations that could require large operator headcount to scale.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 14
launches, deals, and filingsCocolocala and カタレン launched a campaign offering overseas travellers one-way chartered drives from within Tokyo to Narita Airport from ¥1,500.
The service added a connection feature giving 1GB of free internet abroad without the need to rent Wi-Fi or purchase a SIM card.
Hotspring began offering a policy waiving 100% of overseas travel cancellation fees for any reason.
Hotspring opened pre-registration for an overseas travel booking service, offering free traveller support to those who signed up.
Hotspring launched a unit providing traveller support and overseas travel information to promote the resumption of overseas travel from 2022.
Hotspring ended its LINE-based trip consultation and booking service: new consultations stopped on 2020-12-23 at 13:00, responses to existing consultations ended 2020-12-29 at 11:59, and the LINE account was merged into the Cocolocala account on 2020-12-29 at 15:00.
ズボラ旅 partnered with the on-location photo shoot service Lovegraph to offer an anniversary-oriented service.
The service was renewed to handle bookings for transportation, activities and restaurants in addition to accommodation.
Hotspring tied up with ecbo to offer the ecbo cloak luggage storage sharing service to travellers.
Hotspring partnered with Gardia to support deferred convenience-store payment on ズボラ旅.
Hotspring released a chat-based travel booking service on LINE in which staff proposed and booked trips for users who supplied only a departure point; it drew over 4,000 inquiries in a single day after launch.
Hotspring announced it had raised a total of more than ¥50 million in a seed round through a third-party share allotment to venture capital firms and individual investors, to be used for business-model validation, user acquisition and hiring. The company was then headquartered in Adachi-ku, Tokyo.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- 株式会社Hotspringcocolocala.jp · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
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- Japanese travel startup operating 'Cocolocala', an online booking service for domestic and overseas trips with LINE chat support.
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