In this photo provided by Yeogi Eottae, its CEO Chung Myung-hoon gives a presentation at an online press conference held on Oct. 26, 2022.
SEOUL, Oct. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean booking platform Yeogi Eottae wants to make global travel as easy as local travel once tourism demand explodes after the pandemic, its CEO said Tuesday.
“We plan to apply our affordable pricing policy and user friendly customer experience to international travel so that our customers can travel abroad as easily as they did within the country,” CEO Chung Myung-hoon said of its new international travel service at the company’s first press conference.
Yeogi Eottae is a Korean booking platform for lodging, transportation and leisure activities. It boasts more than 4 million monthly active users as of September.
The company was acquired by the British private equity firm CVC Capital Partners in 2019 after it bought a controlling stake in the app’s operator, GC Co. At the time, the app was valued at 400 billion won (US$280.6 million).
The new service will allow users to book flight tickets and reserve accommodations together at a 20 to 30 percent discount focusing on countries within one to four hours by plane, Chung explained.
The booking app will start with reservation services to Vietnam and Japan — the two most popular destinations among its core user base — and later expand to other neighboring countries, including Hong Kong, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Chung said the company was able to provide bookings at a discounted price by making direct business deals with hotels and airliners, which helped eliminate fees paid to intermediary vendors.
Some 120 bookings are open under its new international travel service. Yeogi Eottae plans to increase booking offerings to 200 by the end of the year while “actively” acquiring companies in line with its business strategy and interests in the future.
Amid a global reopening, the company’s turnover for outbound flight booking business grew on-month by 98 percent in September, while the corresponding figure for global hotel reservation business grew by 100 percent.
The company’s turnover surpassed 1 trillion won as of September this year, outperforming its turnover for the entire year of 2021 at 950 billion won.
(Yonhap)
