On March 7th, 2018, Yanolja held a press conference at its office in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. Decided to advance into the global market, Yanolja organized the conference to introduce the major strategy, and was attended by representatives such as Soo-jin Lee, CEO of Yanolja, Jong-yoon Kim, vice president of Yanolja, and Munekatsu Ota, CEO of Rakuten Lifull Stay.

Soo-jin Lee said, “Yanolja is working hard to advance the lodging industry and create a healthy leisure culture. We will grow as a global leisure company through new business development. I would like your interest and support.”

▲ CEO Soo-jin Lee said, “We will grow as a global leisure company through new business development.”

Yanolja decided to move beyond the domestic business area represented by small and medium-sized lodging to a global leisure company and announced blueprints through the event.

According to the announcement, the company will announce a leap as a global ‘R.E.S.T. Platform’ and expand its business area to a large extent. 'R.E.S.T. Platform' is based on accommodation, but it is characterized by ranging over information of nearby area and leisure culture. Each alphabet refers to ‘Refresh’, ‘Entertain’, ‘Stay’, and ‘Travel’, and the whole name means ‘Rest’, which is the nature of travel.

'R.E.S.T. Platform' not just represents the direction of business development to realize Yanolja’s corporate vision, which is “Let everybody play comfortably”, but also contains the intention to realize the value of “Comfortably playing and relaxing”. In particular, it has implicitly expressed the direction of Yanolja, which is to maximize accessibility and usability with relevant information, so that users can enjoy leisure time more efficiently and comfortably over industry branches divided into fields such as accommodation, leisure, and travel.

Yanolja will make various travel and leisure information easily accessible online through global ‘R.E.S.T. Platform’ and improve its usability in both B2B and B2C in order to implement it offline.

▲ Yanolja announced its advance as a ‘R.E.S.T. Platform’.

In this regard, Yanolja will first partner with Rakuten Lifull Stay, which is an online travel agent (OTA) in Japan, as a global strategy for the online division, and will begin the global advance of the company. The two companies will exchange their accommodation and travel inventory to sell to Korean and Japanese travel customers, and use their content and distribution channels to build collaborative relationships with related businesses such as marketing of travel products.

Through partnership, Yanolja develops and introduces travel products such as local travel and shared accommodation in Japan, and shared accommodation products in Japan that Rakuten will show will also be available through Yanolja in Korea. Especially, in June, Rakuten will offer ‘Vacation STAY’, which is a legal shared accommodation product first started in Japan, exclusively to Yanolja, so that Korean customers who travel to Japan can enjoy travelling more conveniently and reasonably.

As for a global strategy of the off-line segment, the company launched a new hotel chain brand 'Heyy' for the first time. Unlike the existing hotel chain brands, 'Heyy' provides a customized accommodation experience for the key travelers in each region.

'Heyy' enhances the quality of the accommodation space, and it can respond flexibly according to various tastes and characteristics by taking advantage of the characteristics of each region and the personality of travelers. So, it features realization of leisure, culture and entertainment by itself.

Yanolja plans to offer a new experience centered on four keywords so that customers can experience a comfortable and happy stay even if they go to 'Heyy' in any area. The four keywords are ‘Friendly’, pursuing comfort based on kindness, ‘User-centric’, judging everything with users as a center, ‘Specialized’, pursuing expertise based on elaborate research and data, and ‘Flexible’, responding flexibly to various conditions.

To this end, Yanolja introduced four concepts including ‘Joy’ for 20s who are looking for pleasure in the city and 30s who are sensitive to trends, ‘Cozy’, where guests can stay in comfort at any time with a natural timber and white color for families, ‘Smart’ for business travelers and young and active business people, and ‘Mania’ for people who enjoy outdoor hobbies such as bikes. Yanolja is planning to present accommodations of the "Heyy" brand from the second half of this year.

Copyright © acrofan All Right Reserved