South Korea’s leading accommodation booking platform Yanolja hopes to list in Seoul and its Singapore operation abroad over the next two years to gain traction for its global stretch, said chief executive Lee Su-jin.

“We are considering listing Yanolja’s subsidiary in Singapore in the overseas market next year or 2021 thanks to the high growth potential in the global market,” Lee said during an interview with Maeil Business Newspaper. “We aim to achieve 70 billion won ($60.2 million) in global sales in 2020, more than twice as high as this year’s 30 billion won.”

The nation’s top business-to-business (B2B) hotel booking service operator netted $180 million in Series D funding from the Government of Singapore Investment Corp. (GIC) and the world’s biggest travel service platform Booking Holdings in June, becoming eligible for a unicorn, an unlisted startup of valuation of at least $1 billion.

Yanolja has been scaling up its business through aggressive M&A deals over the past three years. In July last year, it bought ZEN Rooms, the Southeast Asia’s leading hotel chain based in Singapore, to extend its global outreach. “The subsidiary in Singapore could be listed on the global market before the initial public offering of the Korean headquarters, because the company is valued higher in the overseas market than the local market,” Lee said.

The company will use the investment proceeds in ramping up research and development in technology such as Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI). It has already developed voice control system available at hotel rooms and an electronic kiosk to allow visitors to check in without interaction with hotel receptionists. It will commercialize smart hotel management platform enabling mobile check-in and check-out and robot concierge service next year.

Yanolja said its most valuable asset is vast big data accumulated in real time through accommodation and travel service networks. “The big data we have collected since 2005 for accommodation and 2013 for leisure services enables us to rapidly respond to customers’ ever-changing demand and resolve information asymmetry between businesses and customers,” Lee said.

By Oh Dae-seok and Choi Mira

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]