With the travel and tourism industry reviving post the slump of the COVID-19 pandemic, travel companies and startups are actively expanding and innovating. Korean startup My Real Trip announced it would take over Korea’s largest kids travel platform and strengthen family travel content.
My Real Trip, which operates a travel super app, announced that it has acquired Iwa Trip, which operates a kids travel platform ‘Donkey,’ and incorporated it as a subsidiary. The acquisition amount is not disclosed.
For the past two years, My Real Trip has been focusing on domestic travel, centered on Jeju. The number of domestic flight reservations for families including children has grown 3.6 times in one year, reaching an average of 12,000 monthly reservations. The ‘Donkey’ acquisition was a decision to provide a better travel experience for a rapidly growing family of customers and to accelerate business growth, the company said.
Donkey targets families, housewives
Donkey, which started the service in early 2020, plans and provides premium travel products for infants and toddlers, building high awareness among housewives. It is characterized by a variety of themed travel camps and programs that families can enjoy together, such as music, art, and surfing classes.
Based on this, Donkey reached 60,000 monthly average visitors (MAU) within two years of service launch and recorded sales growth of more than 10 times over the past year with more than 3,500 transactions per month and a repurchase rate of over 50%.
In particular, the ‘Astronomical Camping 1 Night 2 Days with Kids’ product, which My Real Trip launched for the first time with Donkey earlier this year, was sold out in 2 hours, drawing a great response from parent customers.
Kim Nam-hee, CEO of Donkey, said, “We decided to merge in the expectation that our service and My Real Trip would create a lot of synergies. My Real Trip CEO Lee Dong-gun said, “We want to focus on providing a differentiated experience for family travelers through content that brings out the best of both services.” he said.
Meanwhile, My Real Trip plans to introduce more than 300 products in the first half of the year, including various experience products such as museum tours, English camps, art classes, and chess clubs, through the acquisition of Donkey.
