Decoding Yanolja Cloud and Its Hotel Software Strategy
Skift Take
Yanolja Cloud is the world's largest seller of hotel software whose strategy you don't understand. Here are a few "cheat codes," courtesy of the brand's chief strategy officer.
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Yanolja Cloud sells "global" hotel solutions, meaning ones built primarily for outside of Korea, as a division Yanolja, a Seoul-based startup that runs hotels and a travel and lifestyle booking app. Since 2019, Yanolja Cloud has increased the number of hotels that license at least one of its "global hotel solutions" by 60 percent, to 43,000 hotels.Yanolja Cloud appeared to have boosted its business, as measured by absolute customer count, more than any other maker of software for hotel operations during the past two years. Many of its clients are in the Middle East, Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Indonesia.Softbank, the world's largest venture capital investor, often invests in startups with a go-big-or-go-home approach. Names include office-space provider WeWork, mobility app Uber, hospitality conglomerate Oyo, and tours and activities booking travel agencies GetYourGuide and Klook.Yanolja Cloud is moving so fast that its media statements can seem confusing and sometimes contradictory. To clear up some details, I interviewed Jungyun Kim, the chief strategy officer of Yanolja.
Kim said Yanolja Cloud wants to overtake Oracle Hospitality as the global market leader in hotel operational software sales.
Yanolja Cloud has many brands. "We touch everything from vacation rentals all the way to 5-star hotels, resorts, and chains," Kim said.Yet as of today, the majority of Yanolja Cloud's client base is in the small-to-medium-sized accommodation segment. "But we will be ramping up and accelerating our solutions business to serve the upper segment," Kim said. "Oracle Hospitality is the competition we're aiming to overtake."Other companies such as Mews, Cloudbeds, Apaleo, Protel, and Guesty, are indeed competitors, too, Kim acknowledged. "But the clear market leader in our field is Oracle," Kim said."Not only will we be surpassing Oracle in terms of the number of customers, but we'll also be competing on its playing field head-on by selling to the much larger and more complicated hotels than the budget segment," Kim said.As a private, venture-backed company, Yanolja Cloud can afford to spend aggressively on sales, marketing, and software development while operating at undisclosed-but-presumably-high net losses. If it