I'm Yoshi, Executive Vice President and Head of the Matching & Solutions SBU. Matching & Solutions consists of two sub-segments, Marketing Solutions and HR Solutions. We provide matching platforms and SaaS solutions centered around Air BusinessTools for business clients in Japan. Annual revenue in Matching & Solutions is approximately JPY 800 billion. As we discussed during day one of our investor update, HR Solutions, with annual revenues of approximately JPY 300 billion, plays a pivotal role in promoting Recruit Holdings' most important business strategy, Simplify Hiring, in Japan's HR matching market, together with the HR Technology SBU. Marketing Solutions, with annual revenue of approximately JPY 500 billion, is at the center of Recruit's Help Businesses Work Smarter strategy, which is the second pillar of our three management strategies.
Marketing Solutions operates mainly seven vertical matching platforms that connect individual users with business clients and approximately 20 SaaS solutions that support business clients' operations. By utilizing our ecosystem of vertical matching platforms and SaaS solutions, we aim to enhance the productivity and profitability of our business clients in Japan. Our matching platforms and Marketing Solutions are online platforms that enable individual users to find necessary information and make reservations for daily activities such as choosing hair salons, travel destinations, and restaurants, and offer similar services for major life events such as purchasing a house or getting married. Business clients can advertise on our platforms and post their available booking slots, referred to as inventory, utilizing these platforms as a means to acquire customers through advertisements and as reservation management systems, which directly translates into revenue for them.
In order to accelerate the development of our vertical matching platforms, Matching & Solutions established subsidiaries for each vertical in 2012, with each one focused on managing and promoting its specific business area. Having improved our competitiveness to a degree, we integrated all subsidiaries in April 2021 to prepare for the next stage of growth, aiming for revenue growth and productivity improvement of Marketing Solutions. Since then, Marketing Solutions has been actively working to strengthen its governance structure, focusing on effective cost management and investment prioritization. This strategy is aimed at achieving both stable revenue growth and expansion of adjusted EBITDA margin, which is expected to be approximately 28% for FY 2023, which is the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024, before allocation of corporate and shared costs.
Going forward, we believe that the evolution of our Marketing Solutions matching platform and SaaS solutions will enable us to achieve stable revenue growth and an increase in adjusted EBITDA margins through more efficient business operations. Today, I will explain the core focus of our efforts in Marketing Solutions up to the present, how we have continued to evolve, and what we aim to achieve in the future. Ever since our foundation in 1960, Recruit Group has sought to act as a two-sided marketplace that brings together individual users and business clients to facilitate the best possible matches for the mutual benefit of both parties. This is the engine of our business model. Starting with job advertisements for new university graduates, we have expanded our business areas by anticipating changes in the industry and society.
From print media to online media, from online media to matching platforms and SaaS solutions on top of that, we continue to evolve by repeatedly disrupting ourselves and creating new business models. Marketing Solutions tends to be more resilient during economic downturns compared to HR matching businesses. Therefore, Marketing Solutions focuses not only on revenue growth and expansion of adjusted EBITDA margin, but also on contributing to consolidated adjusted EBITDA, especially during challenging economic conditions. Furthermore, the relationship built with business clients in Marketing Solutions and information about business clients' operations acquired through our vertical matching platforms and SaaS solutions is advantageous for HR matching businesses such as Indeed PLUS and the job boards in HR Solutions.
We manage our operations daily, not only as the Marketing Solutions business, but also as part of the Matching & Solutions SBU overall, contributing to the enhancement of enterprise value across the entire Recruit Group. Currently, Marketing Solutions operates vertical matching platforms for beauty, travel, and dining, where the added value of our business support SaaS solutions, including Air BusinessTools, is readily apparent. We also operate housing and real estate, which generates the largest revenue in Marketing Solutions. We manage matching platforms across other verticals, including automobiles, education, and bridal. The annual revenue varies by vertical, with housing and real estate at approximately JPY 140 billion, followed by beauty at over JPY 100 billion, travel just below JPY 100 billion, and approximately JPY 30 billion for each of the verticals in others.
In each vertical, we have become one of the largest matching platforms in Japan. The pricing models for our matching platforms vary according to the commercial practices and characteristics of each sector. These include advertising models, pay-for-performance models, and subscription models. For example, in travel, where hotel room prices fluctuate due to factors such as seasonality and foreign tourism, the pay-for-performance pricing model aligns well with the operations of our business clients. On the other hand, for business clients in fields where service fees tend to be fixed, such as hair salons and restaurants, an advertising-based model offers the advantage of easier budget forecasting. We continuously update our pricing models to ensure they are optimally aligned with the operations of our business clients. By doing so, we believe we can maintain long-term relationships with our business clients and maximize the lifetime value or LTV per client.
Over the past few years, our matching platforms have evolved from merely being media for business clients to advertise to sophisticated matching platforms that can track individual users' actions such as reservations and payments. To achieve matches that directly contribute to the sales of our business clients, we utilize not only online resources, but when necessary, offline ones as well. Moreover, we leverage the vast amount of action data and matching technology we have accumulated over the years. This comprehensive approach enables us to facilitate matches that directly impact business client revenues. Since FY 2011, improvements in the evolution of our services have led to better matching efficiency and increased value of our matching platforms, especially in high-frequency user verticals such as beauty and dining. This has led to a continuous increase in the number of actions taken by individual users.
By FY 2022, the annual number of actions across the Matching & Solutions SBU reached approximately 420 million. In order to continue to grow the number of actions, each vertical matching platform monitors action data closely, constantly making improvements month by month and year by year. At the same time, the management team is not just focused on growing the number of actions, but is strictly managing unit economics. Our decision-making is guided by increasing the LTV of both individual users and business clients while being mindful of acquisition costs. We do this not from the perspective of growing revenue and adjusted EBITDA margin for each vertical, but for Marketing Solutions as a whole. We believe the total addressable market or TAM in Marketing Solutions includes not only business clients' advertising and promotional expenses, but also a portion of their SG&A costs, such as personnel expenses.
This is because our SaaS solutions, regardless of industry, can improve operational efficiency across various industries by, for example, replacing the work of one person in store operations. While we aim to achieve stable revenue growth for Marketing Solutions within this TAM, the contribution to the growth varies across verticals due to the market environment and different business models of each vertical. For example, beauty, where individual user frequency is high, tends to reflect the added value of enhanced productivity through our SaaS solutions. Therefore, in addition to acquiring new business clients to drive revenue growth, we also expect an increase in revenue per business client due to an increase in the cross-use of SaaS solutions. Housing and real estate also has good potential to contribute to future revenue growth.
In Japan, offline advertisements such as flyers are still common, but there's a gradual shift from offline to online advertising each year. Leveraging our industry-leading position in the market, we expect to grow revenue by acquiring new business clients and increasing our wallet share of existing clients by enhancing convenience for both individual users and business clients. Next, I will explain how optimizing productivity of our internal operations enables the simultaneous evolution of each vertical business area and the Matching & Solutions SBU as a whole. Matching & Solutions is structured by functions with departments such as corporate staff, sales, and product. All verticals are represented in each department. This structure has enabled us to reduce redundant costs, manage expenses more appropriately, and optimize personnel assignments more quickly when compared to before 2021, when each vertical operated its own subsidiary.
The management team strictly manages expenses and personnel assignments across the business to achieve revenue growth and expansion of adjusted EBITDA margins for Marketing Solutions as a whole. For example, the product department, rather than the sales department, has the authority to make decisions regarding advertising and promotional expenses. This allows us to manage the cost effectiveness of advertising by repeatedly analyzing the outcomes of implementing or not implementing advertising campaigns. While controlling advertising expenses contributes to an increase in adjusted EBITDA margin, management decisions are made carefully to ensure that this does not lead to a long-term decrease in the number of actions taken by individual users. To illustrate how we optimize personnel assignments, let's take a look at our sales team as an example. Our sales team functions as a department across all verticals rather than being divided by individual verticals.
This structure allows us to quickly adjust personnel assignments between and within verticals based on economic trends and future growth prospects. We also have a thorough system in place that allows our sales team to utilize the anonymized action data of individual users and the operations data of business clients as assets for their sales activities. This minimizes variability in the quality of proposals from each sales representative and helps them refine their productivity while maintaining and improving the quality of our sales team. The relationships that our sales representatives have built with our business clients are an extremely important asset to our company. Our corporate culture is built on the idea of not only proposing our services, but also deeply engaging in our business clients' overall operations and thinking as a stakeholder about what improvements can be made.
This mindset has led to the creation of many new products, including Air BusinessTools, our suite of business support SaaS solutions. By leveraging these important assets and our corporate culture, we believe that we can further enhance the efficiency of our sales activities in the future. Rather than only focusing on our productivity, we aim to increase the adjusted EBITDA margin in Marketing Solutions by understanding the environment where there's a significant disparity in IT literacy among business clients. We will do this by introducing customer support systems that do not require sales representative intervention and by establishing specialized functions such as new customer acquisition and customer success according to the business sectors and characteristics of our business clients.
From here, we will detail how we are progressing with identifying challenges faced by individual users and business clients, and how we're implementing improvements in our matching platforms and SaaS solutions for individual users and our business clients aimed at growing revenue and improving adjusted EBITDA margins. A detailed explanation will be provided by Junichi Akiyama, who is in charge of product management and product development for Marketing Solutions, and Keiichi Ushida, who is in charge of SaaS product management. I'm Jun, and I'm responsible for product management and product development for Marketing Solutions. I was involved in the launch of Salon Board, a cloud-based reservation and customer management system in beauty, and in the product management of SUUMO, a matching platform in housing and real estate.
I'm Keiichi, I'm in charge of SaaS product development. I have been responsible for product management and new business development, working on the launch and management of products across many of our verticals such as Hot Pepper Beauty, Hot Pepper Gourmet, Jalan, and AirPAY. Jun and I will cover the following four key initiatives: enhancing individual user convenience to increase the number of actions, increasing available reservation slots, which we call inventory on the matching platform, and strengthening client relationships by improving operational efficiency of business clients, optimizing acquisition costs for both individual users and business clients, and future potential of fintech services utilizing payment transaction volumes. We believe that these initiatives will significantly contribute to the growth and success of our matching platforms, we are excited to explore these opportunities further.
First, I would like to talk about increasing convenience for individual users. Have you ever found yourself thinking that you want to get a haircut or a massage after work? I too have had moments where I think, "I have some free time after work today. I should get a massage." If salons only offer reservations by phone, you might encounter situations where they are already closed for the day, or you can't get through to anyone before opening, making it difficult to book at the right moment, so you might end up not going or putting it off for another day. Salon Board was created in order to meet individuals' demands for features like making a reservation whenever they want, and it has now become an indispensable infrastructure for the operations of hair salons, massage parlors, and nail salons.
Salon Board is a vertical SaaS provided to business clients of Hot Pepper Beauty. It enables business clients to accept reservations 24 hours a day and provides all the functions needed to operate salons. Reservation management, customer management, point of sale or POS functionality, revenue and operational performance analysis, and since last year, the ability to create and manage job postings. We believe Salon Board has significantly contributed to the growth of Hot Pepper Beauty, which has become one of the biggest matching platforms in Japan in the beauty segment. Housing and real estate is another example of a vertical where we have significantly improved convenience for individual users. Housing and real estate, which started as the launch of monthly housing information in 1973, now accounts for approximately 30% of revenue in Matching & Solutions.
It offers SUUMO, a matching platform that provides information on all types of housing, including detached houses, apartment and condominium sales, rentals, and custom-built homes. Initially, the magazine started as a collection of real estate advertisements, but we continuously aim to make the housing search process easier and more convenient for individual users. We created the industry standard by producing the first-ever index function, which organizes property information by train line, station, and price. We launched an internet version of SUUMO, being the first to create an online marketplace. We have repeatedly been ahead of the curve, creating services and features which are now the industry standard. As a result of our efforts, we have democratized access to real estate information and drastically improved convenience for individual users. Through this evolutionary history, SUUMO now supports the matching of individual users and business clients such as real estate companies.
However, a challenge in this field is that individuals do not frequently move and buy or rent new properties, so most people don't have a lot of knowledge about how to best manage this process. As a result, it requires a lot of time and thought to make a decision. Although we made the process more convenient for individual users by providing information online, given the complexity, we wondered how we could more effectively and timely match these individuals with business clients. We decided to create offline services in addition to our online matching platform to best support the decision-making of individual users. In 2005, we launched a service that provides the face-to-face introduction of properties to individual users. Specifically, we operate more than 200 physical locations in shopping centers and other locations nationwide known as SUUMO Counter.
SUUMO Counter offer free consultation to individual users about purchasing custom-built homes and new condominiums. Operating with a performance-based pricing model where business clients pay commissions upon completion of a deal. The conversion rate of individual users who utilize SUUMO Counters is significantly higher compared to those who only use the online matching platform. This is due to the human involvement in the offline process. For us, this leads to revenue through performance-based fees rather than advertising fees. In order to solve the fundamental issues faced by individual users and business clients, we are enhancing the value of our matching platforms by utilizing all of our assets, including online and offline services and matching technologies. This evolution is not only happening in housing and real estate, but also in other verticals.
I will talk about our efforts to increase the inventory available on our matching platforms by improving the operational efficiency of our business clients and strengthening our relationships with them. Earlier, Jun presented how Salon Board is equipped with all the functions necessary for salon operations. By having Salon Board handle all administrative tasks other than treatments, business clients can devote more time to serving their customers, resulting in an increase in the inventory available on our matching platform. Additionally, since February 2023, we have been offering Hot Pepper Beauty Work, an HR matching service that combines with Hot Pepper Beauty. In addition to a monthly service usage fee, this service introduces a performance-based pay-per-hire pricing model with the revenue accounted for in beauty and matching solutions.
Hot Pepper Beauty Work automatically links information from Hot Pepper Beauty, which is important for job seekers, such as details about the store staff, treatment menus, and user reviews. This means job seekers don't need to go back and forth between job boards and Hot Pepper Beauty to gather all of this information. They can search for jobs, collect salon information, and apply for jobs all through Hot Pepper Beauty Work. For business clients, they don't need to duplicate salon information, which is already on Hot Pepper Beauty to post the job advertisement. They can hire directly from Salon Board, which they are already using on a daily basis. This convenience allows business clients to streamline their hiring processes dramatically by reducing the effort required to create job advertisements, allowing them to post jobs much faster and more easily than before.
It's been one year since we launched this service. As of the beginning of March 2024, there were approximately 34,000 salons using Hot Pepper Beauty Work. Next, I'll talk about Air BusinessTools, the core of our SaaS solutions. Air BusinessTools, which improves the efficiency of management operations regardless of vertical, began as a response to the common operational challenges faced by various business clients using our matching platforms, and in particular within beauty, travel, and dining. In 2013, we launched our first service, AirREGI, a POS register application, and now we offer 16 Air BusinessTools services. Although there are differences from business to business, stores that provide services like restaurants or beauty salons are said to have at least 50 processes that are necessary to operate the business.
Among these, 30%-70% of the time is spent on administrative tasks such as marketing activities, facilitating reservations, inventory management, and hiring staff. Moreover, each of these tasks are often managed in separate systems or even paper-based, which complicates the processes and requires considerable time and effort, hindering productivity improvement for business clients. Air BusinessTools, including AirPAY, AirREGI, and various other services we offer, reduce the time, effort, and costs associated with these tasks by replacing the analog operations of a business with digital solutions. This spans from reservation and reception management to accounting and payments, from recruitment and shift management to cash management and invoice management. These characteristics of Air BusinessTools are behind Kitamura's earlier explanation that the Matching & Solutions includes a portion of a business client's labor and sales and administration costs.
Let me introduce a case study that demonstrates how our business clients have leveraged our ecosystem to achieve improvements in productivity and performance. A restaurant utilizing Hot Pepper Gourmet, a matching platform for dining, along with its accompanying reservation management system, Restaurant Board, that was also using AirPAY and AirREGI for enhanced cashless payment support, introduced the use of AirREGI Order following the COVID-19 outbreak. As a result, most of the customers who now visit the restaurant use mobile ordering, which has eliminated order errors and typing mistakes at the cash register and greatly improved operational efficiency, simultaneously increasing the average spend per customer. While in the past, customers tended to refrain from placing additional orders when they saw busy staff, mobile ordering has eliminated the need to call on staff.
This has resulted in a significant improvement in lost order opportunities and driven higher average spend per customer and increased store revenue. The number of reserved seats, which had previously been managed by the time of day or day of the week, can now be managed more precisely and appropriately by visualizing the restaurant's seating status in real time. With real-time visibility into availability and the ability to make on-the-spot reservations, convenience has increased for individual users who want to dine at the restaurant, resulting in positive results for the business client in terms of improved table turnover and service quality. Furthermore, with the increased revenue, we can expect increased use of our services.
For example, to hire new employees or part-time workers for restaurant expansion or new restaurant openings using AirWORK ATS. To upgrade the advertising plan on our Hot Pepper Gourmet matching platform, or even to add listings for new restaurants. In this way, through Air BusinessTools, the visualization of operational data and its accumulation enables us to provide the most suitable solutions to the challenges faced by our business clients. In addition, as productivity of business clients improves, inventory on our matching platforms increases, leading to more matches and actions between individual users and business clients. We will discuss measures we're taking to streamline the cost of acquiring individual users and business clients, ensuring they continue to use our services over the long term.
Firstly, let me discuss Recruit ID on the individual user side. Recruit ID is an ID for individual users and is used as a login ID across vertical matching platforms in Marketing Solutions such as SUUMO and Hot Pepper Beauty, and those in the HR Solutions such as Rikunabi NEXT. The number of Recruit IDs has been steadily increasing, with the total number of IDs issued, including active and non-active accounts, reaching approximately 87 million as of February 2024. We offer a loyalty program that allows individual users to earn and use points on our multiple vertical matching platforms linked to a Recruit ID. These loyalty program points can also be used for a wide range of services offered outside of the Recruit Group. We designed this program to encourage increased engagement on our matching platforms, utilizing the activities of individual users as a catalyst for further use.
Next, I will explain AirID and its impacts with business clients. AirIDs are issued to business clients using Air BusinessTools, allowing seamless access to all services within the Air BusinessTools suite with just one AirID. Based on the latest economic census, the number of potential customer establishments for our SaaS offerings is estimated at approximately 4.38 million. We assume that these establishments would use multiple SaaS products, and we use the cumulative number of accounts across multiple services as a KPI. As of December 31st, 2023, the cumulative number of SaaS accounts, including Air BusinessTools accounts and including where one customer may have multiple accounts for different SaaS services, was 3.6 million. Therefore, we believe there is still significant potential for growth in the cumulative number of accounts as more business clients adopt multiple services.
In addition, with the launch of Air BusinessTools, a business support SaaS that is not restricted to any specific field, we are increasingly adding business clients in industries outside those we traditionally serve, including retail, various service industries, and pharmacies, areas where we previously had no transactions. For example, of the approximately 450,000 AirPAY accounts as of December 31st, 2023, approximately 55% are for business clients in the beauty and dining segments. The remaining 45% are from businesses where we don't operate a matching platform. We believe that regardless of the business field, we will continue to face the challenges of Japan's aging workforce and chronic labor shortages, and that our business support SaaS will help address these challenges. We believe that by providing solutions for business clients that help solve their operational issues, we will continue to expand our client base.
Offering business support SaaS solutions not only expands our client base, but also offers additional benefits. Business clients that use both matching platforms and SaaS in their businesses tend to have lower churn rates as well as higher revenue per client compared to those that only use matching platforms or only use SaaS. For example, let me introduce a case study from Beauty and Dining, where the added value of operational efficiency through our business support SaaS is most evident. Across these businesses, when a business client uses both our matching platform and AirPAY, one of our SaaS solutions, the churn rate for these customers 13 months after starting the paid service is just one quarter that of our business clients who use the matching platform only. I would like to discuss the future potential of Fintech services utilizing payment transaction volumes.
By completing the transactions of individual users within our ecosystem through AirPAY and AirPAY ONLINE, we can enhance payment convenience for individual users, reduce lost revenue opportunities for business clients, and increase the amount of payment transaction volume flowing through our ecosystem. Gross payment volume continues to grow as the ecosystem expands and is expected to reach approximately JPY 1.8 trillion in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024. The expansion of gross payment volume is one of the key performance indicators of our Help Businesses Work Smarter strategy. It is the foundation for the expansion of Fintech services, potentially contributing a new revenue stream to our business in the future.
We view the next three to five years as a period to grow revenue and increase adjusted EBITDA margins through the evolution of our ecosystem of matching platforms and SaaS. At the same time, we will leverage the expansion of our customer base through SaaS to lay the foundation for new businesses with the potential to contribute to future revenue. We will further reduce the time required to match individual users with business clients, increase the convenience of taking actions such as making reservations, and increase the likelihood of these actions leading to sales for our business clients. In the future, we plan to utilize technology across our entire business more than ever before.
Improving operational efficiency while using action data from individual users and operational data from business clients obtained through SaaS, including our business tools. Our goal is to evolve into a business model that allows us to charge for more precise matching and actions taken. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you very much for attending Recruit Holdings Investor Update to Help Businesses Work Smarter. I will serve as the moderator today. I am Shin from IRPR. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for watching the presentation. From here, we will have a fireside chat with the presenters and receive questions from the sell-side analysts. Today, we have Yoshihiro Kitamura, Head of Matching & Solutions Business, President and Representative Director of Recruit Co., Ltd. Ken Asano, Executive Vice President of Product Management. Mio Kashiwamura, Senior Vice President in charge of CHRO, Public Relations and Sustainability. Kitamura and Kashiwamura are Executive Vice President and Senior Vice President of Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd., respectively. Asano is heading all product teams, including Akiyama and Ushida's team, who spoke in the presentation. Without further ado, we will start the fireside chat.
I will ask the questions that are probably of high interest from the capital markets participants. Thank you very much. First of all, starting with revenue and profit. At the strategy briefing two years ago, Kitamura-san announced that we were aiming for the revenue of JPY 1 trillion in the medium term and adjusted EBITDA margin of 20%, low 20% as Matching & Solutions. With the launch of Indeed PLUS in January this year, as mentioned in day one, just yesterday, these were reset as revenue in HR Solutions will shift to the HR technology business. You explained that the company will now aim to grow revenue and adjusted EBITDA margin as Marketing Solutions, did not announce any specific numerical targets this time. By when, how much is probably of interest.
In the next three to five-year period, what image would you like the capital market participants to have regarding revenue growth? First of all, the disclosure of the numbers and target will be in May when we announce our financial results, so I hope you could wait till then. As mentioned in the video, the annual revenue is JPY 500 billion or so, and this is managed over multiple business domains. Recruit ID is one number we've disclosed. The customers, the users, will book or do some actions using our services, and this is 87 million ID. This is now quite sizable. Compared to other services, you can see the size, the magnitude of the service. User base and Air BusinessTools, where SMEs and number of business clients is increasing now.
These two assets that we have will be leveraged to evolve our existing matching platform. Furthermore, this Air BusinessTools will also be leveraged to generate new value. With that, we want to maintain our growth rate. Thank you.
Since we have Asano-san in charge of product, I would like to ask a more specific question. Going forward, this may be the same question, what is going to be the driver for growth going forward in terms of revenue? In our Marketing Solutions business, structurally speaking, the revenue growth of our clients correlates to our revenue growth. Our growth driver, that is going to be linked to the performance of our business clients. For example, number of the reservations or the per customer spending at stores or utilization. The biggest driver is going to be the number of reservations, the number of actions. The number of customers that we can refer to stores will directly contribute to our clients' revenue growth.
Improving convenience is the key, and there is a further room for improvement here. In the past, when you wanted to book online, you needed to send a message saying, "I want to book on this date at what time," and then the store will tell you if that is available or not. As of today, you can have instant reservation. You just need to press a button in order to make a booking. That is an instant reservation model, which contributes to an improvement of convenience for our clients and customers. In Hot Pepper Gourmet and Beauty, you can make a reservation up to one minute before the desired time.
It's just before the time you wish to visit the store. The reason that is possible is because there is a collaboration with Air BusinessTools. Earlier, Ushida gave a message in the video that when you take orders in AirREGI, there is a signal that the table is filled at the store, and that signal is received. When payment is made in AirREGI, it sends a signal that the table is vacant, and it would give that signal to Hot Pepper Gourmet. On a real-time basis, you can have real-time management of availability at store, and you don't have to worry about the availability. Clients do not need to have strict seat management. In collaboration with Hot Pepper platform, clients will be able to use this conveniently.
On the customer's side, individual users will be able to make an instant booking. That is becoming possible today. Ever since AirREGI started, we did have such service. Finally, in Tokyo at this time, I believe thousands of stores would be available on this instant booking system. Finally, I think this has been familiarized with a wider audience, and that is leading to improvement of convenience. The other day, it was paper until recently. Right. It was used in beauty salons, but now until one minute prior to the visit? In 2012, Gourmet started online reservation. For beauty... Well, for Salon Board, it's 2012. Yes, Salon Board was developed in 2012. This Salon Board is a good product.
Well, I may sound boasting, but the beauty stylist schedule is the basis. When they fill up the schedule, the vacant schedule is going to be released on Hot Pepper Beauty. On a real-time basis, the store does not need to manage by themselves, but they just need to take care of the stylist's schedule. With that system, customers can enjoy this benefit of the infrastructure with instant booking. Thank you for that response. Ceaseless improvement of user experience is the key, I believe. Next is margin. Adjusted EBITDA margin, you gave a strong message on that too. Now, there's no target, how margin can be improved? The sales structure and the improvement in the productivity of business execution.
I want to ask Kashiwamura-san. What is now ongoing? That is my first question. Sometimes we're asked from the investors on the housing and real estate and beauty sectors are very competitive. Compared to Matching & Solutions, or HR Solutions, the margin is higher. Using this best platform in the industry, is it possible to leverage high competitiveness to reduce costs and investment and raise margins further? Please. As you probably know, beauty and housing and real estate, if you do the comparison, we are in a strong position. We are generating many actions. Business clients are expecting highly of this. There's an increase from that, and the profitability and revenue is that much bigger. Profit margin is rising accordingly. That is the model that we now have.
In housing and real estate, life event domain. It is only once or twice, three times a year. It's less frequent matching in life. Beauty, which is used every month in one way or another. The market is different, but what's common is the number of actions. The action volume is converted to sales, to revenue. As a result, at same expense, the EBITDA margin improves. This is a good favorable cycle, virtual cycle. We want all business to move in that direction. The order of contribution is different. We need to manage the order properly and have the advertising and promotion expenses and other investment. These have payback period of about 1 year. With some condition, we manage to raise the adjusted EBITDA margin level. In addition, the sales structure.
As Shin-san said, yes, we were using paper until a while ago. In the paper media era, Salespeople had to do many things. With that sales structure, we are in the current era in some businesses. Of course, that need to be revisited and improved and enhanced. Kashiwamura-san, you're well-versed with this, so please share with us your view, please. Yes. First of all, as an underlying premise, three years ago, seven companies were merged into one. We can flexibly allocate human resource cross-functionally according to the business environment. With that, we can assign people to growth areas. This is susceptible to economic cycle. HR is impacted by economy, we can shift people from HR to Marketing Solutions when the economy is down. This is the underlying premise.
As Kitamura-san just said, for the customer interface, customer contact point, key is how to raise value in the customer contact activity and reduce the manpower, the headcount. As Kitamura-san said, originally, when 2012, this was when the beauty and Salon Board was launched, one salesperson did the first signing of the client contract and then onboarding, and then explained in detail how it can be used and follow up when there are problems. One single person did everything, but this is difficult from capability perspective. First, the role of starting the new contract and then support through onboarding, the client success, those tasks are separated to offer value and enhance value. In each domain, we are seeing evolution. After the integration, we are trying to accelerate everything. We have taken on many challenges over the past three years.
One is client success department is established, which is cross-functional. The best knowledge, the cutting-edge knowledge is shared and systematized. The data platform and dashboard infrastructure are also in place now. Data, it needs to be extracted in a timely fashion. Dashboard, Air BusinessTools, when after customer introduces Air BusinessTools, how it's used, how they're troubled, needs to be understood in a timely fashion so that we can address customers' problems in a timely fashion. This is the evolution we have achieved in the past few years. One example is in one domain, client report exists. This was the impact the previous month, and this can be viewed from the data. This is how we propose using the client report.
Salesperson used two to three hours per client, but now with the data platform dashboard, we can have the good analyzed report in five minutes. If one person is in charge of 20 business clients, client report took 30-40 hours a month, but now it's down to less than one hour. We are optimizing for each domain and also overall, the manpower reduction and higher value is something we can pursue further. We can go on and on on this point. Maybe we can touch on more specifics in the following questions. Thank you. This is going to be my final question, and it is on fintech service. I think there is a lot of expectation, and the market participants would be wondering what it will look like, especially through Air BusinessTools.
We've already started trials on website and in IR meetings, we talk about it's still in the preparation phase, and I think we are aligned on that. Moving forward, what is going to be a fintech service unique to Recruit? Can you describe it? Kitamura-san or Asano-san, as a person in charge of product? Yes. Frankly speaking, well, I have a high expectation for the future potential, when it comes to fintech service, you need to have legal compliance, and we need to accumulate our own data and have a system to utilize that data. It's going to take some time. Help Businesses Work Smarter is the concept. We help business clients improve their productivity. That is the big concept.
Air BusinessTools helps to make the troublesome works easier or get rid of those troublesome works. That is the objective. That fintech service that we will develop will be aligned with those, that service and will be offering similar value. The size of GPV continues to increase, as you are aware, but just multiplying it with take rate, it's not as simple as that. We're not just trying to introduce that formula. Well, cash-related friction or bother is something that we want to make sure that we can remove. That is the value we would like to identify and solidify before offering that to the market. Frankly speaking, I hope the market can be patient. Do you have any additional comments on the product? Yes.
As a trial, we have an invitation-based trial for AirCASH service, which improves the convenience of cash management. The GPV is the basis of AirPAY, and based on that cash flow, you only need two clicks on the system to raise funds and cash. Through Air BusinessTools, we have access to information, and the more it increases, it means that more convenience can be offered to our clients to raise funds. It's not just a one-time offering, but we need collaboration of the various different tools to offer unique, distinctive service of Recruit, and we want to offer support to our clients' day-to-day challenges. We're hoping that this is going to roll out in various different ways going forward. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take questions from the sell-side analysts. We will take two questions per person, so please raise your hand if you have the questions. First, Goldman Sachs Securities Munakata-san, please.
This is Munakata from Goldman Sachs. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. My first question is on ecosystem. When you build ecosystem matching platform, the individual's actions and the account number of the business clients and the GPV, these KPIs will increase altogether, I understand. The growth of the three KPIs, they should not be separate, I think. Looking back few years, these past few years, how do you evaluate yourself, your performance? Are there areas that you are satisfactory or not so satisfactory yet? The three will grow in the same rate, or are there KPIs that will grow stronger than the others?
Thank you. If you could ask your second question too.
Thank you very much. Second is maybe a qualitative answer is fine, but reducing the labor costs and the cumbersomeness, you've been focusing on that, and this, I think, is very powerful. As we need to improve the labor productivity because labor unit cost is rising, maybe you can re-receive more pay for that. What do you think about monetization there? Are there many opportunities? What is your view?
Thank you very much, Kitamura-san.
Thank you for the question. Very good questions. Thank you. I will answer your first question, and then Asano-san will also comment. For the past few years, we enhanced online matching business. We decided to change our business model from around 2010. The number of matching and the number of business clients and the GPV for the past few years have grown more than we expected. These three, as you rightly said, are linked as they grow together. The more the matching, the more the business clients, and if the payment can be completed, then GPV will also increase. These will all increase in a chain reaction manner, if you will. Until now, it's been better than we thought. That is my view. Now our expectations to the future.
The KPI we can expect for the future, I want all to grow all of them, to be greedy. The number of business clients, to generate user action, this is a very important source of information, and it is also a source of GPV. Number of business clients in Air BusinessTools, increasing the number of business clients, is something we need to focus more and more. Yesterday, we talked about HR Tech. We will use such scheme to address the HR market in Japan, it will serve as the assisting role for that. The number of business clients I expect to grow very strongly. From product perspective, what do you think?
From product perspective, the number of actions and the GPV, by vertical, the growth phase is different because they started in different time points. If we look at this on the horizontal manner, what we cherish is the number of actions. The simple number of actions can increase by improving the usability or the convenience. With that increase in number of actions, we're being paid in accordance with the improvement in the business client's performance, how we can contribute to the spend per customer after increasing number of visits. In Jalan net revenue assistance service, we are involved until pricing and anticipate the operational utilization ratio and assist and suggest the future possible utilization rate and be involved. As Hisayuki Idekoba said in the presentation, customer order.
In restaurant, customer order, a customer can order by smartphone and therefore increase the spend per customer. This is where another area we want to be involved. In Hot Pepper Gourmet, when the restaurant is booked, booking can be done every 15 minutes and points can be added, given. The utilization management, we have the infrastructure where we can manage utilization rate. Using point or the time-limited coupons, the booking rate can be improved. Not only that, we can also be involved in the utilization rate and booking, and this will eventually raise the overall GDP. The nature of the... is different from the simple number of actions in the past. Your second question. The time and the head count manpower that been reduced is powerful. Now, is this fair? Are we being paid fairly?
Thank you. That is a great question. From product perspective, it is partially included, but the way we are paid now is the number of business clients. As we increase our business clients, it is happening as a result. We want to make this even more powerful. Of course, with this, of course, there are things that will no longer be necessary, but that's great. You never know until you actually use it. Until you use it, the business clients will not understand how valuable, how usable it is. If we make it pay, it will hinder the introduction. At the starting point, the profitability or may be low, but we want more business clients to use it, first of all, so we focus on that point.
In order to increase revenue, we use data and assist and to find out what unit price we should set or what unit price is appropriate for which time point to maximize profit. Data and AI, service using AI. We will add on or convert to that so that we can have an even more powerful usage and profit. The result of that is something we are looking for. We are still midway, halfway through our journey. I hope this answers your question. Thank you very much.
Munakata-san said, so the time we were able to reduce in term times of, well, there's some Well, on the brand website, it says that, we were able to reduce, 21.72 million hours. I think this is a very powerful number. Yes, the reduced number of hours, what is it used for instead when we think about it? Well, maybe, it can be offered in the form of labor. Well, improving productivity means thinking about what, for example, the reduced number of hours can be allocated to in order to maximize the revenue and profits of our clients, which will ultimately lead to the growth of our revenue.
Inclusive of pricing as a result of contribution, we need to make sure that we maximize the source in order to grow revenue even further. Thank you. Let me move on to our next question. JP Morgan, Mori-san, please. Yes, this is Mori speaking. Thank you so much for your explanation today. I also have two questions. One is related to AirPAY. 55% of clients are existing users, as you mentioned, 45, excuse me, 450,000, that number. There's more than 1 million TAM. If the ratio is at 10%, well, I think it depends on what you would like to achieve with AirPAY, but is the penetration rate simply 10%?
The other question is, in areas where matching is not likely to happen at 45%. How are you going to face those areas, when there's no scalability of matching, will it be a profitable business? That is my first question. My second question is, maybe this is not a good question, but housing and real estate and beauty are the two largest areas. If the growth of these two areas slow down, segment as a whole may slow down. These two are already large to a certain extent. I would like to ask you, what is going to be the driver for these two businesses going forward? Is there a room for further penetration among clients?
As you explained, in details today, revenue per client, is that going to be possible to grow further and there's no worry? Those are my two questions. Yes, thank you. For your first question, I'm going to respond. For the second question, Asano-san is going to respond, I believe. To your first question. The business clients who are not using matching platform, how are we going to tackle that area? Also, there was a question related to the market as a whole. As we discussed in the beginning, there's AirCASH, and the cash-related friction is something we want to remove or make it easier to deal with. That's what we have been studying and using prototypes to hold trials with.
As discussed earlier, for example, payroll, payment, that is a new system that we discussed earlier. Regarding clients whose touchpoint with us started from cash management, then we would like to continue expanding the value in that cash-related service. As a result, we would need to discuss the take rate. That is something we hope to offer. At the same time, this is a unique strength of Recruit, but HR Tech was discussed the other day, and recruiting happens in such areas as well. We have a horizontal service of recruiting. By offering services in one way or other, GPV is something we hope to think about together with the cash flow. I think you will be able to imagine what is likely to happen in the future.
To your second question, Well, maybe this is what we should respond from a product side perspective. If the growth of housing and real estate and beauty slow down. We will be growing Marketing Solutions as a whole, but housing and real estate and beauty are already large. What will be the drivers there? In terms of housing and real estate, compared to beauty, travel, and dining, using technology to solve the clients' challenges and improving convenience of users in that area, we delayed. For example, from 2018, we started the online reservation service, which is six years later compared to the dining service. There is a room for further improvement in services.
We started from paper-based media and moved to online media, we're still in progress, or it just started to become more convenient. I think there is a room left for further improvement. Depending on the timing of transition of services and timing of release, the growth may seemingly slow down. Regarding housing and real estate, I believe there is a room left for growth. Regarding beauty, today in the booking service, we are able to offer a certain amount of service to the market. There's their business tools used as add-on. If that happens, we will be able to contribute even more. That is the perception from the product side. In the beauty area, beauty salons, hair salons, other than those areas, what about the aesthetic areas?
That is growing strongly, right? Yes, aesthetic salons and nail salons. Well, mainly, well, people say that our service is mainly around hair salons, but actually there are many more in beauty areas, and there are new types of salons born every day. Well, I often use massage, for example. It may be mainly for women, but new types of services are born, and companies are trying to acquire users via various means. Once they post their ads on our platform, they will be able to reduce cost per user. When they think about user acquisition. Because the market is aware of that, some early-stage businesses choose us in many cases these days.
We have a platform with clear target, and I think the environment is encouraging various businesses to create new types of salons. I do have a hypothesis that we can grow further. Recently, many services are used by male users as well. I think there is a room for growth there as well. For investors, this aesthetic area is something new. How do you distinguish? Beauty is hair salon and coloring salon and aesthetic area, aesthetic salons, nail salons, or eyelash salons. Everything else is one area, and then there is medical area as well. There is just everything, right? Yes. You can even use it five days a week. Thank you. To your second question, in housing and real estate, per client basis.
On a per client basis, using IT and web service, we can contribute even further, so we will be able to grow revenue per client. I don't like it to describe it in this way, but clients DX is something we would like to expand as measures to grow revenue per client. Regarding beauty, as we said earlier, we can grow the number of clients even further. I think that is going to be the driver in these areas. I hope we answered your questions. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next question is from Citigroup. Yamamura, please.
Thank you very much. Citigroup, I am Yamamura. Thank you for appointing me and for your explanation. I have two questions. First is HR Tech. From the advertisement-based revenue, you are shifting to CPC and SaaS data action. Billing is another plan. In the beauty where the revenue is large, the advertisement-based revenue model is still the mainstream, I think. The current format, is this the best solution or not? From the nature of the industry, this billing model, is this the final format, or will this move to CPC or CPA eventually in the future? That's my first question. My second question is on Air BusinessTools. You are trying to improve the productivity to maximize the revenue. I understand the scheme, the revenue is growing strongly year after year.
In the medium term, maybe apply aside from your intent, the SaaS business may contribute to your profit. Is that a possibility? You said you want to offer this for a low cost and focus on penetration, but now the competition is intensifying. In the long term, maybe the monetization will become difficult. Is that a risk that we need to think about? If you could share with us your view. Thank you very much.
Thank you. That's the question to Kitamura-san.
Yes. The first question from PPC to PHPA is progressing in HR Tech, especially on beauty. On monetization, I touched on this before. We are doing a big research, and the way we research is the buyer. For the business clients, acceptable one that help their decision-making, not just in terms of price, but also the items. Which item it can be recognized under. Including this buying psychology, we decided on the current format. For example, in beauty, it's not transaction. We take the advertisement-based model. We say advertisement, but in reality it is subscription. It's like a monthly usage fee in most cases. Of course, new users. Of course, this is to acquire new customers, but we have the booking management system, Salon Board, which is highly acclaimed.
We need less people to manage it. In that sense, it is unlimited use per month. It's a sense of security from the user's perspective. It's not an industry that has much affluent cash flow. It's easier to know the payment of the following month, not based on the posting. We think this is the best at this point in time, but will it continue being the best in the future? Maybe better, but maybe not necessarily the best. This is not only for beauty. We need to continue researching to find the best solution. Now, suppose we shift to PPC type model. Maybe the inventory that users will be satisfied will not be there.
The days that anyone can want to go or the popular time zone, because we're human beings, there is a concentration on particular days or times, and when it cannot be booked, it will lower the attractiveness of the platform, the user action declines, and user ID will no longer grow. Which means that we will no longer have the positive chain reaction of value. That is why we did not adopt PPC model. From monetization point of view, we decided considering all these elements, and at the same time, if we can have all the inventories, the higher the booking, the lower the unit cost, which means more seat means you can register quickly, which means the vacant seats on the platform can be maximized more than other players.
That is why the Hot Pepper Beauty's performance is so high. It's the balancing act. The way we offer value on the platform and the way we bill, this is thought in the balance. If the business evolves in the future, if there is a midpoint action that is more valuable than the final action, we may move to PPC model or some usage fee type model. At this point in time, especially in beauty, we think existing model is the best. Now, monetization is difficult. It's a difficult perspective. From product, anything you can say? From product perspective, from the sales front line, our salespeople visit the clients and have the, this much investment and this much response and this much revenue. On our booking system, you can see the amount of money.
That is the conversation we have with the clients. This much investment and this much return. That is the basis of the conversation. Take rate based model. On the product side, there's sales and that increase. Using our platform is calculated and see if the current monetization is appropriate. If we are received too much, then the clients will suffer. The client side need to grow, and we need to grow, and where is that fine line? We are trying to ascertain that fine line. Model is a advertisement-based model, but if we look deeply, it is transaction type, similar to transaction type model in reality. That is how the business clients take it. Yes. In beauty salons, to attract new users, they need to incur cost.
Repeaters for the hairstylist's capability, will it be based build on the Recruit? That's wrong. The hairstylist's capability attracts existing and new customers. It's difficult to ascertain. The beauty salon side and the need to be satisfied and to make it a convenient platform, we need it to be usable and convenient for the users and higher profit for the business client, the beauty salons. We're trying to take all that into account to come up with the plan. Hot Pepper Beauty, the advertisement model was the mainstream, but after COVID, the usage-based plan is newly introduced. When customers do not come, it does not incur cost, but when the booking comes, it will be usage-based, pay-as-you-go. According to the market, we change the model, tailor the model. It's a cross-use.
It's using both. From the person who selects, we should not narrow the option too much. PPC, HR Tech, it will shift to HR Tech. In the Japan, the advertisement revenue model is adopted in some parts, and PPC and D Plus model exists in other areas. In the billing model, we need to increase the options for the business clients along the way. Thank you very much. Now second question. Air BusinessTools. It may, as a result, contribute to profit. The long-term risks. I think we touched on this before. The standalone SaaS that replace some kind of business operation will become difficult eventually as a standalone because there's a chain of value. By being used for a long time, lifetime value, it goes up. If it's a standalone, there's no positive chain reaction of value.
Including the reduction of the workload, we have been increasing the service lineup. SaaS, yes, competition is intense, but the competitive landscape is finished. We are beyond that, I think. In the short time frame, SaaS products were launched one after another. If it's a standalone value, LTV, lifetime value, cannot be generated, we have the connected value and use multiple ID. We are offering this in a simple manner so that we can snap out of this SaaS, this competitive landscape, fierce competition. We are in a good position and therefore we are starting to talk about fintech. At the same time, in the video you saw matching platform and SaaS, if it both is used, LTV improves. If both are used, we can reduce the churn rate.
Direct sales and assisted sales, it contributes to both. Air BusinessTools contribute to both. Yes, it is probably contributing to profit. What do you think? As Kitamura-san just said, there's the industry with media platform and some other industries that are irrelevant. In verticals with media platform, with Air BusinessTools, the value that is offered by Air BusinessTool and reflected on media tool. Air BusinessTool data can capture the vacancy information. With higher convenience, the media value goes up, the media revenue goes up in some industries. In other industries, it is totally different. When we separate the two, which side should we weigh on and offer more service on? We think of that when we design our monetization plan.
On the media side, sometimes it's the contribution to profit, but maybe SaaS side or some independent industry. In the balance between the three, I think the contribution is already being made. Media client, new acquisition, some come from SaaS side and then pay in media side in more cases now. Reducing the sales cost and churn rate improvement and follow-up cost reduction, I think there is a contribution there too. Thank you. I hope this answers your question. Thank you very much. I learned a lot. Thank you. Thank you so much. We are at a closing time, so we would like to finish the Q&A part.
I would like to ask the three of you to give messages to the capital market participants in the order of seating, Asano-san, Kashimura-san, and then Kitamura-san, please. Thank you for joining us today once again. As someone in charge of products, our services are being brushed up every day, and I think it is becoming more convenient than ever. I hope that you will use Hot Pepper Beauty to book hair salon and massage salons or go on a trip through Jalan or use Hot Pepper Gourmet to book a restaurant. Maybe you can use SUUMO to purchase a condo, or perhaps you may be interested, and in that case, we can serve as a point of contact to introduce you to a real estate company.
I hope you will do that. Thank you. Kashimura-san.
Thank you for your attendance today. I talked as an HR person today, and ever since foundation.
Recruit has been putting importance on the bet on passion culture, meaning that when people take action from what comes from within, it leads to the best performance. It's important that employees think about what kind of services they wish to have, and that will lead to offering added value to our clients, which will ultimately lead to enhancing social value. We will continue to embrace this culture to maximize the value we can offer. Thank you once again. Kitamura-san, please. Thank you for joining us today. In Recruit, matching service is our core business. In the past, we started from paper-based media matching 1.0 , and then it shifted to online matching 2.0 .
Then it became a platform, which includes a payment function, which completes a lot of actions, and I recognize that as matching 3.0. Moving forward, using data and AI is going to be the key to evolve into something new. When I think ahead, in 10 years from now, this kind of service, will be changed in certain ways utilizing new technologies. That is something we discuss internally, to model new platforms, and we've been working on various different trials. Compared to the past, our services, while we disclosed some numbers today, but, compared to what it used to be, I think our service, performance is higher, than ever.
Tomorrow, next month and next year, our services and as a business as a whole, we would like to aim for what is even better. After 10 years, new technologies and services will be utilized to realize a completely new matching form. In order to realize that, we want to think about what we should be doing today in our business operation. As Asano-san said, who's in charge of product, and Kashimura-san also commented, as someone in charge of HR, that we need to recruit diverse talents and evolve our offerings. We may deny about a half of what we are already doing in order to become even better. To the capital market participants, we will strive to convey our messages in easier to understand manner.
I hope you will keep in touch. Thank you very much, everyone. With this, we would like to conclude investor update day two. Tomorrow is day three, prosper together session. Senaha, the COO, and three outside members of the sustainability committee are going to attend. We'll hope to see you tomorrow. Thank you.