🌍 The Global Hotel Price Transparency Project
— A 60-Year-Old Founder’s Final Global Challenge —

Susumu Hasegawa
Founder, Global Hotel Price Transparency Project · Japan

This is not a travel project.
This is a global transparency movement.

This is my final entrepreneurial challenge.
I am now 60 years old.
And I have just begun the most important challenge of my life.

Not for myself.
But for the next generation.
For young people and children around the world
who will shape the future.

This is the story behind
the birth of the Global Hotel Price Transparency Project.

Today, hotel prices are not transparent.
The same hotel.
The same date.
The same room.

Yet prices vary dramatically
depending on the booking platform.
Sometimes by hundreds of dollars.
Sometimes even more.

Most travelers never see the true lowest price.
Because many private or hidden rates
do not appear in search results.
They often appear only after tapping
“Go to site.”

This structure exists worldwide.
Yet almost nobody
is documenting and verifying it systematically.

So I made a decision.
To build
the world’s first infrastructure
that documents real hotel price differences
across cities and booking platforms.

Not theory.
Verified reality.

I admired entrepreneurs from a young age.
At 22, I joined Tokio Marine Insurance.
At 26, I left and started my own business.
Since then, my life has always been a challenge.

In April 1997,
following the once-in-a-century deregulation of Japan’s Insurance Business Act
as part of the nation’s “Japan’s Financial Big Bang,”
I founded Cosmos Insurance Brokers Co., Ltd.,
one of Japan’s first independent insurance brokerage firms,
with initial capital of 10 million yen.

This regulatory reform opened a completely new market.
I stepped into that moment to help create a more transparent
and consumer-driven insurance industry in Japan.

In April 1998, I founded
“Hoken Square Bang!”,
Japan’s first insurance comparison website.

In October 1998,
I established Twenty-One Insurance Company,
a captive insurance company in Bermuda,
one of the world’s major insurance jurisdictions.

In October 1999,
I founded Web Crew Inc. with capital of 10 million yen.

Web Crew later grew rapidly
as one of Japan’s leading comparison platform companies
and was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers market in 2004
with capital exceeding 1.5 billion yen.
(Reference: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ウェブクルー)

After that, my journey continued across technology, infrastructure, and society.

In 2005, at age 40, I stepped away from the front lines of business.

Together with my three sons, I pursued a shared dream: Formula 1 and MotoGP.

From 2002 to 2016, our family challenged the world of motorsports.

My second son became the 2025 Gold’s Gym Japan Cup champion. My youngest son became an HRC MotoGP development test rider.

Life moves in cycles. Dreams never disappear.

When I was 30, I met Kazuo Inamori, founder of Kyocera.

He told me: “Hasegawa-kun, do not have emotional worries.”

Another phrase, often attributed to Harvard, shaped my mindset: “If you must suffer, enjoy the suffering.”

In October 2025, we moved to Handa City together with my parents. Four of us now live in that home.

That decision changed everything.

In December 2025, I learned about massive global investments in AI, and realized: If others can risk everything to build the future, why shouldn’t I begin again at 60?

While swimming my daily 2,000 meters, I made a decision.

I will build the world’s first hotel price transparency infrastructure.

Not a blog. Not an affiliate site. An infrastructure.

Systems can be changed. Age does not limit challenge. Pain can be turned into fuel.

Life truly begins when you decide to challenge again.

Cities currently under verification:
Paris 🇫🇷 / London 🇬🇧 / New York 🇺🇸 / Dubai 🇦🇪 / Bangkok 🇹🇭 / Singapore 🇸🇬 / Tokyo 🇯🇵

We document real price differences. We verify hidden rates. We make the invisible visible.

My journey and daily activities are shared across platforms.

I am 60 years old. And I am just getting started.

There is no path before me. My will creates the path.

僕の前に道はない。意思の力が道を切り開く。

— Susumu Hasegawa
Founder, Global Hotel Price Transparency Project
Japan · 2026 🌍
Project Headquarters: https://officials.tokyo
Founder Archive & Background: https://officialsites.club