As travel and tourism open up post-COVID-19 restrictions, travel and leisure companies are looking forward to a more profitable future. Korean leisure travel platform company Yanolja has expanded its business by investing in rental mobility companies.
Yanolja recently invested in ‘Kaflix’, the No. 1 rental car mobility platform in Korea and has become the second-largest investor in the company. Kaflix started operating Korea’s first car sharing economy service, ‘Jeju Pass’ in 2016 and runs ‘Mosaicar,’ a vehicle subscription service based on an algorithm exclusively for rental cars, which received Korea’s first technology patent. It has the largest small and medium-sized rental car network in Korea, including 450 affiliated companies and 42,000 vehicles. Its strength is a real-time rental car reservation service using a cloud ERP (integrated information system) solution.
Yanolja to add services to its Super App
Jeju Pass, an enterprise value of 200 billion won, got a series B funding of 32 billion won, including this Yanolja investment. Yanolja decided to invest in the company’s leisure inventory, Jeju Pass’s market share in Jeju, and AI and cloud-based solutions. Chan-seok Choi, Chief Investment Officer of Yanolja, said, “We expect that Caplix’s mobility network and the cloud-based system will provide a differentiated mobility experience by meeting with Yanolja’s leisure inventory, the super app. We plan to lead the global leisure trend by strengthening Yanolja’s unique service through Caplix.”
“In the future, we plan to expand the global business of non-face-to-face rental car solutions, focusing on famous overseas tourist destinations,” said Chan-seok Choi. Yanolja predicts that the rental car demand in advance will provide stable services at reasonable prices even during peak season, from pricing to vehicle type analysis. In addition, by utilizing the characteristics of rental cars with high cross-selling, Yanolja’s services such as accommodation, leisure, aviation, and restaurants will be introduced through various channels, and a service platform specialized for Jeju Island will be built within the Yanolja leisure super app.
The two companies plan to introduce car rental services using data-based algorithms in the global market in the future. In particular, Jeju Pass plans to use Yanolja’s diverse leisure inventory based on this investment to expand the integrated reservation platform business for travelers in Jeju, while focusing on entering the global rental car market in Japan, China, Southeast Asia, Guam, and Hawaii. am.
Hyung-Jun Yoon, CEO of Jeju Pass, said, “The investment in Yanolja, which has global competitiveness, has provided a growth engine for the expansion of the integrated reservation service and the global advancement of mobility services. As we open an integrated Jeju travel reservation platform that leads to air, accommodation and travel contents, we will lead the digital transformation of Jeju tourism contents such as AI-based travel information services and present a sustainable Jeju travel culture.”
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