By Exec Edge Editorial Staff
Exec Edge interviewed Jeff Kim, CEO of Yanolja Cloud and Yanolja Group CSO, a global travel platform that provides online accommodation services.
Tell me a bit about your background. How did your experiences at Google and McKinsey shape your career and outlook on the future?
Prior to joining Yanolja, I gained valuable experience at Google and McKinsey & Company where I had the opportunity to study a broad spectrum of companies throughout the tech industry. It was during this time that I realized we are in a period of accelerating digital transformation, and there was an opportunity to lead industry disruption with AI and data. While in the past, this type of digital disruption was often neglected by large corporations, I experienced firsthand how tech startups are able to strengthen their innovation DNA, even after they become massive companies. These previous roles gave me invaluable experience in strategically supporting startups as they transform into leading global tech companies, as I’ve done and will continue to do with Yanolja.
Tell me a little bit about the history of Yanolja and the story of its founding. How did it become the leader in global tech for the travel industry that it is today?
Yanolja’s founding story is one of inspiration and resilience.
Sujin Lee, our founder and CEO, began working as a hotel janitor. Through this role, he observed the operational challenges in the accommodation industry firsthand and saw an opportunity to improve the connectivity across the value chain and streamline the overall travel consumer journey.
Out of this drive, Yanolja became a market leader in Korea’s travel industry, providing both enterprise (B2B) and direct-to-consumer services that enhance the efficiency and profitability of suppliers and the quality of the traveler experience. Leveraging its leading position in Korea, the company has since expanded globally, deploying cutting-edge travel technology solutions to enterprise clients around the world.
What led you to join the company? What roles have you played there?
I joined Yanolja in 2015 as the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) and shortly after, in 2016, I took over as Chief Business Officer (CBO). Currently, I serve as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Yanolja Cloud and Yanolja Group CSO. In my role, I lead both of our B2B businesses including cloud software, connectivity and data-driven services at Yanolja Cloud and the overall group strategy and business performance at Yanolja.
When making my career move to Yanolja, I was looking for a company where I could leverage my past experience to make a true impact in helping the company grow and realize its digital transformation. The opportunity for global expansion to enterprise clients in the travel industry was clear, and I saw the opportunity that data-driven services could bring to our customers looking to maximize the efficiency and profitability of their businesses.
Today, Yanolja has offices in 29 countries and a network of suppliers in over 200 countries as well as tens of millions of users in Korea. I am extremely proud to have helped build a leading global travel technology company.
How would you best describe what Yanolja does? Who are your competitors, and how do you differentiate from the competition?
Yanolja is a leading global travel technology company offering comprehensive services and solutions to enhance experiences for both industry enterprises and travelers. From our B2B roots coupled with our leading position in the Korean travel and experiences industry as a consumer platform, Yanolja is now serving 1.3 million enterprise customers worldwide offering enterprise solutions connected with more than 13,000 sales channels, in over 200 countries.
Yanolja was built on the vision to create technology that connects people to their unique travel dreams. Our direct-to-consumer channel in Korea revolutionized how travelers experience the world, with user-friendly interfaces and localized expertise that enrich each travel journey. Now, with a focus on global enterprise, our fast-growing B2B business provides tailored solutions that optimize connectivity, operations and profitability for travel industry partners around the world.
What makes our business truly unique is our emphasis on data-driven services, including vertical AI. Yanolja has access to a massive pool of owned data from our expansive data lake that enables us to enhance our enterprise solutions to best help the global travel ecosystem increase operational efficiencies and revenues. This not only makes an impact on the overall travel value chain, but allows us to enhance profitability better than other businesses trying to create data or artificial intelligence solutions. For most companies, collecting data and acquiring customers are the most difficult and costly tasks. Unlike our competitors or peers, Yanolja is already well equipped with an enormous customer base and massive access to owned data. It’s the reason why we have continued to profit from our B2B business, different from the other technology companies in the same space, and it allows us to make the significant investments in data protection and security that are so important in this industry.
The result is that our unique enterprise business has led to significant growth in amount of owned data and Total Transaction Volume (TTV) as we continue to scale our global business.
How has Yanolja’s evolution from an OTA (online travel agency) to a global travel technology company, including the development of Yanolja Cloud, shaped your business strategy over time?
Whether in B2C or B2B services, our goal from the beginning was to identify ways we can leverage technology and innovate our offerings to create enhanced experiences for our suppliers and consumers at-large. That has required a constant commitment to evolve our business, first from a B2B company, then to an online travel agency focused on simplifying consumer travel and experiences in Korea, and now to a global travel technology company. In fact, those services are quite symbiotic: our B2B business is meaningfully improved based on the amount and quality of owned data, helping our customers and partners improve their efficiency and profits. Without that flow, the data loss or inconsistency can impact the consumer user experience, and impede the improvement of our B2C service. Our expertise in Korea’s travel value chain allows us to test and refine our solutions locally before deploying them to our enterprise (B2B) customers worldwide. So there are significant advantages based on Yanolja serving both markets.
Over time, our strategy has expanded based on the need for global connectivity. With operations in over 200 countries providing services to over 1.3 million travel companies around the globe (hotels, resorts, etc.) and connected to more than 13,000 global sales channels (OTAs, travel agents, etc.), our solutions automate supplier’s travel operations to pull that data they need automatically, without loss. And by leveraging AI, advanced connectivity with our data lake resolves any inconsistencies and provides richer, more accurate and actionable data. Our strategy continues to be to offer data-driven services to add value for every market player across the travel value chain, enabling operational efficiency and revenue growth.
Technology has clearly changed the way people travel, certainly from a research and booking standpoint. But with the advent of artificial intelligence, it appears that radical changes may be coming. How do you expect AI and machine learning to affect the travel industry?
We’re at the forefront of those changes now! We’ve built our own Large Language Model (LLM), which has allowed Yanolja to build internal tools that are specifically designed to enhance productivity in the travel sector. For example, we’ve built review analysis tool or translation tool specialized for travel sector, and an AI interface for hotel front desk operations.
That’s the power of Vertical AI. Because of our data and focus on the travel industry, Yanolja can build disruptive technology that truly adds value. Yanolja’s vertical AI is fueling innovation for the consumer travel experience, and addressing some of the industry’s greatest challenges.
What approach does Yanolja take to customer data privacy and security as the importance of global data protection regulations continues to increase?
Data protection and security are the most important values and the core of our businesses as a global travel technology company. Provided services across the world for nearly two decades, we understand the growing importance of customer data privacy and security more than anyone. We operate with privacy top of mind at all times to not only protect our customers and theirs, but also to safeguard our position as the leader in global tech transforming the travel industry.
Our number one priority is providing data protection for our customers, and we continuously ensure effective data protection activities through improving our information security management system.
We comply with laws and regulations in all jurisdictions and ensure a secure business environment against various threats in the cyber landscape. To this end, our dedicated team of cybersecurity experts implements specialized systems and actively utilizes cloud-based security technologies to ensure that data is securely protected within the privacy zone. Additionally, we ensure top-level, systematic security activities for protecting customers’ personal information and sensitive data by annually verifying the effectiveness of our information protection activities through third-party audits for ISMS-P (Information Security Management System and Privacy Certification).
How do you see Big Tech competing in Travel? Is Yanolja positioned to win?
It’s a good question, and answering it requires an understanding of how Big Tech and Vertical AI can actually work together. Big Tech typically build new AI interfaces that are evolved from traditional search or commerce platforms. In order to compete in travel, they’ll ultimately look for more quality data to fuel their insights and improve the service.
That’s where Yanolja becomes a factor. We own and offer the kind of quality data and connectivity services through the travel value chain that such AI systems need. With robust global data platform of Yanolja, every travel market player including Big Tech will be our customers or partners. Our rich data (without inconsistency and data loss that plagues the industry at times) will be essential and vital to the future of travel and tourism in the digital age.
Now that you’ve talked about how AI/ML might impact the industry, can you elaborate on Yanolja’s AI strategy?
We are simply at an advantage. Yanolja Cloud currently provides solutions to over 20,000 hotels, resort and other providers in over 200 countries, leading to automation and improvement in data quality and operational efficiency.
Our strategy is to continue to seamlessly connect the data flow between suppliers, sales channels and consumers through our connectivity service, which increases the diversity and consistency of travel information. Our hyper-connected technology is pulling operators away from manual processes that often corrupts the travel information they need to identify efficiencies. Our AI technology and data lake Have enabled the 13,000 sales channels that connect with Yanolja to access richer data, and expand into important new areas, including dynamic pricing, digital marketing, prediction-based rebooking and fintech services. Using Yanolja’s growth engine, the possibilities of growth for the travel industry are infinite!
Contact:
Editor@executives-edge.com
