Kakao Mobility posts sevenfold rise in overseas ride-hailing services

Kakao Mobility Corp., which runs South Korea’s most popular ride-hailing app, saw its services in overseas markets grow sevenfold in the first nine months of the year as the company aggressively pursued overseas expansion.

According to its year-end business review report released on Friday, use of its taxi-hailing platform, Kakao T, abroad increased sevenfold in the January-September period from the same period a year earlier.

Kakao Mobility, a unit of tech giant Kakao Corp., has been expanding its overseas services amid criticism of its business practices, including alleged abuse of its near monopolistic position in Korea’s ride-hailing service market.

The company now operates Kakao T services in 37 countries, including the US, the world's largest mobility market, where it joined hands with Lyft, a partner company of global mobility platform Splyt.

In March, Kakao acquired Splyt, a UK riding-hailing startup, in its first cross-border deal.

FASTEST GROWTH IN JAPAN

Kakao Mobility saw the fastest growth in the use of Kakao T services in Japan, which allowed South Koreans to enter the island country without a visa in October 2022.

In January 2023 alone, Kakao T service calls in Japan surpassed its entire calls in 2022, the report showed.

Globally, Vietnam topped the list of Kakao T’s top five service countries this year, followed by Japan, Guam, Thailand and Singapore.

In October, Kakao said it had linked its ride-hailing app to several overseas payment services, including Alipay, to allow foreign tourists to easily use its taxi-riding services in Korea.

Foreign tourists in Korea use Kakao’s ride-hailing service mostly to travel to famous places known for Korean culture and K-pop singers.

Those sites include Yongma Land in Seoul, often used by K-pop artists as a video shooting location; Jumunjin Beach in Gangneung, Gangwon Province, where boy band sensation BTS shot part of a video near a bus stop; and Awon Museum & Hotel in Wanju, North Jeolla Province, another location where BTS took photos.

Kakao said foreigners used its ride-hailing app to access those locations because of the lack of public transportation services operating there.

Hotels and restaurants accounted for a quarter of foreigners’ starting and arrival points when they used the Kakao T app in Korea.

An analysis of flight tickets sold via the Kakao T app showed Koreans’ favorite overseas travel destinations include Japanese cities such as Osaka, Tokyo and Fukuoka in that order.

Kakao T app users booked flight tickets for travel in Korea 13 days ahead of their departure, on average, according to the analysis. For overseas travel, they booked tickets 36 days in advance.

The day of the week with the most departures from Korea to Japan was Friday, Kakao’s year-end review report showed.

Monday was most favored by Korean tourists as the day to return home from Japan.

Write to Ju-Hyun Lee at deep@hankyung.com

In-Soo Nam edited this article.