Booking Holdings Backs Yanolja for Hotel Booking: Travel Startup Funding This Week
Photo Credit: Yanolja, which calls itself the largest online travel platform in South Korea, has raised $180 million in Series D funding. Originally a love hotel company, it now offers Kotels, one of which is shown here, which are respectable properties without adult entertainment on the TV or neon lights. Yanolja
Skift Take
Yanolja got its start as a chain of so-called love motels. But it has since become a reputable online travel agency in Korea and a provider of a widely used property management system. No wonder Booking Holdings has made a strategic investment in the company.
Travel Startup Funding This Week
Each week we round up travel startups that have recently received or announced funding. Please email Travel Tech Reporter Justin Dawes at [email protected] if you have funding news.
This week travel startups announced more than $206 million in funding.
>>Yanolja, which calls itself the largest online travel platform in South Korea, has raised $180 million in Series D funding.
GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, and Booking Holdings led the round. The funding placed a valuation on the startup of more than $1 billion.
The companies said that Booking Holdings' brand Agoda would start to offer its customers Yanolja's South Korean hotel listings, and Yanolja customers will offer its users listings from Agoda and other Booking Holdings' brands.
Yanolja, which means "Hey, let's play" in Hangul, got its start by offering so-called love hotels, or places for people to meet for romance. So the company is also the owner of more than 200 hotels under its brand name and more than 1,000 properties under the ZenRooms brand. Since 2015 it has focused on offering more respectable and traditional lodging under brand names like K
