Yanolja looks to triple foreign visitors to Korea with K-culture tours

South Korea’s top travel and accommodation platform Yanolja Co. aims to nearly treble the number of foreign tourists to the country through its subsidiary Interpark Triple by introducing tailored package tour programs combined with K-culture toward their goal to become a major global travel-tech company.

Yanolja, backed by SoftBank, on Tuesday unveiled an ambition to attract 50 million inbound travelers to South Korea in the next five years. That compares with the government’s goal to increase the number of international visitors to 30 million by 2027 from 17.5 million in 2019 before the outbreak of COVID-19.

“The 50 million visitor target is amazing as the number is similar to South Korea’s population,” said Yanolja founder and Chairman Lee Soo-jin in his first press appearance in six years. “I cannot imagine how much they will boost the country’s GDP and how great the collateral effects will be. It is a tough challenge but one we really want to achieve.”

The South Korean unicorn aims to achieve this goal through Interpark Triple, which is set to provide tailored package tour services combined with popular cultural products such as dramas.

Yanolja in 2021 acquired a majority stake in a unit, which included travel services, shopping, book orders and ticket sales, of Interpark Inc., one of South Korea’s first-generation e-commerce platforms. Yanolja later sold Interpark’s shopping and book businesses to Q0019 Pte. Ltd., a Southeast Asia-based e-commerce platform to focus on the travel sector.

Interpark, which last year took over Triple, a hyper-personalized platform for tour services and content, changed its name to Interpark Triple.

TAILORED PACKAGE TOURS WITH K-CONTENT

Interpark Triple plans to develop customized package tour services for inbound travelers with a focus on programs combining K-content given the company’s strength in the ticket business.

“K-content is the best solution to attract foreign tourists. More than 63% of foreigners want to visit South Korea because of K-content,” said Kim Jongyoon, CEO of Yanolja’s wholly-owned subsidiary Yanolja Cloud Pte. Ltd., which provides digital transformation service to global hospitality and leisure properties.

Interpark Triple plans to utilize artificial intelligence to reflect detailed requests by foreign tourists.

The company aims to satisfy inbound travelers who want to visit the provincial filming locations of famous series streamed on over-the-top (OTT) media platforms such as Netflix Inc. and try food eaten by South Korean stars and take photos in the same pose, said its CEO Choi Hwi-young.

“All they need to do is name their desired destination without searching. Once they name it, a digital secretary specializing in travel, like Jarvis from the Iron Man movies, will kindly and faithfully give the answer,” Choi said, referring to an AI butler in the film series.

“If they say they want to visit places that appeared in famous K-dramas, it will recommend a three-night and four-day itinerary consisting of the filming locations of the drama series and music albums. Once they give more detail, it will create customized package tours.”

CUSTOMIZED TOURS FOR DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES, CULTURES

With the help of AI, Interpark Triple is also set to develop tailored services and customized tour packages based on visitors' nationalities and culture, as well as their food and language needs.

Kim recently heard complaints from travel industry officials in the United Arab Emirates that they could not find restaurants for halal food prepared and handled according to Islamic Sharia law as well as places for prayer in South Korea, even though the country has such places.

A rise in inbound tourists to South Korea is expected to reduce its chronic travel account deficit, industry sources said.

The country reported a travel account deficit of 1.5 trillion won ($1.2 billion) in January while Japan enjoyed a surplus of 1.8 trillion won, Kim said.

Write to Young Chan Song at 0full@hankyung.com
 
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.