Yeogi Eottae Company is expanding into the global OTA market through the acquisition of a Japanese travel platform company.
It was announced on the 18th that it will acquire the entire stake in Loco-Partners, a subsidiary of the Japanese telecommunications company KDDI . Loco-Partners operates the Japanese travel booking platform Relux. Relux is one of Japan’s leading OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) with strengths in booking luxury hotels, resorts, and ryokans, and has secured approximately 3.8 million members.
Through this acquisition, Yeogi Eottae has established a structure that simultaneously owns major travel platforms in Korea and Japan.
The company explained that it has expanded its business scope to the Japanese OTA market, following its package travel business through the domestic independent travel platform ‘Yeogi Eottae’ and its subsidiary Yeogi Eottae Tour (Online Tour). In particular, by securing Relux, which has strengths in the Japanese high-end accommodation market, the company expects synergies in product and customer linkages between platforms.
Jeong Myeong-hoon, CEO of Yeogi Eottae (Photo courtesy of Yeogi Eottae Company)
“Connecting Korea-Japan Travel Platforms”… Promoting Expansion of Inbound Market
Yeogi Eottae plans to expand synergies in the future by sharing know-how in product planning, marketing, and technology development across its platforms.
The company is pursuing differentiation by integrating Korean travel products into Relux and, conversely, supplying Relux’s high-end Japanese accommodation products to the Yeogi Eottae platform. Through this, the strategy is to target not only the demand for Koreans traveling to Japan but also the demand for Japanese travelers to Korea, and furthermore, the demand for travel throughout East Asia.
The industry observes that domestic travel platform companies are recently accelerating their entry into the global OTA market and the expansion of their inbound businesses, moving beyond the simple domestic accommodation booking market.
Japan is considered one of the key overseas markets most closely watched by the Korean travel platform industry. With demand for travel to Japan steadily increasing, there is a growing trend of expanding collaboration and acquisition strategies with local Japanese platforms.
CEO Jeong Myeong-hun stated, “Through the acquisition of a Japanese travel platform, we have laid the foundation for direct entry into the inbound and global markets,” adding, “This M&A is the first step in challenging new markets based on our product, marketing, and technological competitiveness.”
Meanwhile, amidst intensifying competition among travel platforms, Yeogi Eottae is expanding its business portfolio beyond accommodation bookings to include package tours, global OTAs, and the inbound market.
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AloJapan.com