Korean travel super app Yanolja catches another billion it will be a model for the market
Korea’s most popular super travel app Yanolja boasted another round of funding. Will receive a not inconsiderable amount of 1 from Japan’s Softbank fund.7 billion dollars.
Super apps as one stop shop triumphs in Korea
As is widely known, Koreans are obsessed with technology. Living in a digital world has reached its highest level just in this region of the globe. So it’s worth taking a look at what’s happening in the travel field, perhaps these trends will come to us sooner than we think.
Yanolja as a one stop shop – the approach of the developers of the super app makes perfect sense
They want the customer to satisfy all needs for both classic travel and everyday leisure activities through it. In the application we have, so classic services for booking tickets, hotels or theme parks. Also highlighted are the most attractive domestic destinations such as Busan and Jeju.
In addition to tourist content, the one related to daily leisure activities is being promoted very strongly. So we have the option of booking a restaurant or just playing the most popular mobile games. We can fulfill all our important leisure needs with this one super app.
This approach has appealed to users Yanolja enjoys Unicorn status
This approach to digital consumption seems to really appeal to users. The app is growing at an expotential rate. It has already reached Unicorn status in 2019, i.e. A company valued at $1 billion. That’s when Booking holding invested in the applications, putting up $180 million. The current investment announced by Softbank is almost 10 times larger. With such measures, the super app will certainly accelerate its expansion.
Are similar solutions possible in Poland, users would like many services in 1 place
One can speculate whether a similar solution is possible in Poland. It certainly makes sense to integrate multiple services in one place. Combining the booking of strictly tourist content with other (restaurant) content could give good results. Such a sample mix of eSky, Panek Carsharing, Travelista, Delicious.pl, Sky Casha would give a lot of useful content in one place. However, the road to such integration seems a long way off.
Although one may be tempted to try it on a smaller scale e.g. In the area of transportation, the synergies seem obvious. Integration of Yanosik, How to get there, Sky Cash and Panek would really be a qualitative change. Maybe the Koreans will show us how to do it.
Big travel brands in Asia want to lead E-commerce Air Asia is to pave the way
There was a lot of buzz the other day about plans by Asia’s air cargo giant, Air Asia to launch a huge e-commerc, based on the carrier’s multi-million dollar customer base. This is also where the concept of a super app came in. Recent buzz about its entry into the food distribution market in Singapore.
But this is certainly not the only idea for development. Air Asia clearly declares that the Super App is supposed to be an idea to become independent from the airline business, COVID time itself was to be used by the carrier mainly for the development of the Super App. So far, unlike in Asia, European carriers have failed to even successfully sell vacation packages. Failures in this field were recorded by Wizz Air and Ryanair. Perhaps it was simply too early.
Asia usually seems to be a few years ahead of us when it comes to digital/e-commerce trends. We’ll see if the approach ala Super App, will live to see the first realizations in our country as well, and how this will affect the image of the tourist market.
