Just as Tesla has expanded the size of the car market from around $1,000 to $2,000 billion to $5,000 billion, Yanolja believes that through its technology solutions and global ambitions, it can expand the travel and hospitality market to $3,000 billion.
“Our vision is very big,” said Jongyoon Kim, CEO of Yanolja and Yanolja Cloud, speaking at WiT Japan & North Asia 2022, during an interview on “From Unicorn to Decacorn: A Lesson In Globalization.”
“We are envisioning a world where technology digitizes and connects all kinds of spaces and personalizes those spaces throughout the travel journey from one location to the other.”
And his vision, which he believes can be achieved within eight years, by 2030, includes all kinds of physical spaces beyond hotels as well as metaverses, which he believes are perfect for travel because they involve two things: content and inventory, which travel is rich in.
“We’re just at the beginning,” said Kim of Yanolja, which in 2021 bucked trends when it raised $1.7 billion, expanded globally, sealed partnerships in key markets such as Vietnam and acquired two South Korean businesses – 70% of Interpark’s e-commerce business and ad tech company Dable - critical to its ambition to grow from unicorn to decacorn.
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Currently, Yanolja connects about 50,000 spaces which will double by this year, he said, a number that could grow to one million spaces by 2025. Despite COVID, the company achieved a 107% growth rate last year, mostly from the hospitality tech sector. “This is very important momentum, we can accelerate the growth rate,” he said.
To expand in North Asia, it is looking for partnerships similar to what it sealed with VNLIFE, Vietnam’s largest payments company, which owns VNTravel. “We already have more than 350 partners, including resellers, in 170 countries and we are looking for new partners who can digitize spaces,” said Kim.
Expect announcements of new partnerships in Japan, China, North America, Europe and Southeast Asia “where we are discussing details with specific partners already,” he said.
To complement its SaaS business, it will be rolling out Interpark as its travel and lifestyle brand outside South Korea. Yanolja acquired 70% of Interpark’s e-commerce business at the end of last year, paying approximately $250 million for the stake in the South Korean e-commerce giant.
“Interpark is already number one in the B2C flight booking and entertainment ticket market such as concerts and sports” as well as a leading outbound player from South Korea. Yanolja’s plan is to develop Interpark’s travel and lifestyle offerings, using e-commerce to scale its travel vertical globally.
He wants to link “flight and entertainment” to spaces and “we are talking with many hotels and property owners to combine entertainment and spaces to diversify the customer’s experience.”
With its acquisition of ad tech company Dable, it will roll out personalization services for its hotel customers to achieve better targeting and personalized offers. More than half of Dable’s revenues already come from outside South Korea, with Southeast Asia a primary market.
He sees Dable as Yanolja’s connector between providers and customers, enabling providers to send personalized offers and customers to receive them.
AI Hotels, net-zero carbon emissions, metaverse, NFT – all on the radar
Kim sees two pillars to Yanolja’s globalization plans – one through developing “AI hotels” and the other, using its technology to help hospitality achieve net-zero carbon emissions.
He describes “AI hotels” as “where the base is cloud and we make the data flow in the cloud, and we can then connect every [piece of] AI technology there.” Its first “AI hotel” is the H1 Hotel in Gwangju, and a second, part of the Ramada group, is being constructed and should open the first half of this year.
On carbon neutrality, he said, that with 8% of carbon emissions coming from travel, it would be very difficult for the industry to achieve its goal in line with the Paris Accord. “We need very clear roadmaps to address this issue, we believe Yanolja Cloud is the solution to help achieve carbon neutrality … and we would like to be the leading company to address the net-zero carbon emission issue.”
Another pillar of Yanolja’s globalization strategy is tapping into the popularity of Korean pop culture and using travel as the vehicle to “carry K-pop culture” across the world. “Interpark’s market share in the entertainment business is more than 70% – we sell more than 70% of BTS tickets in Korea – and we have all the data about K-pop entertainment … travel is the most important carrier for culture and content.”
He said it does not help any country’s GDP if popular content or culture is only consumed domestically; however if travel companies such as Yanolja can leverage the data it has (such as the data it has on groups such as BTS), and distribute this content, “then their volume can be multiplied”.
Kim is most bullish about the future of metaverses and NFT in travel. As he sees it, “the travel sector consists of content and inventory and metaverse is a new interface integrating online and offline. Also, NFT will be a key to improve the transparency of the inventory and make the operation more efficient,” he said.
In South Korea, it is combining its tickets with NFT “and we can control the resale of the ticket which is very important for the entertainment agencies.”
Metaverse will also require more content and “that’s the reason why the content industry’s value is going up and I believe the travel sector content is the biggest among other sectors. If we can utilize the content and inventory in an efficient way with new data technologies like NFT,” then he sees metaverse as a leading trend to watch in travel.
And he said that Yanolja intended to be an innovator and early adopter in creating a use case for NFT and metaverse in travel.
* This article originally appeared on WebinTravel