Canola is celebrating its self-appointed “unicorn” status after securing a $180 million investment deal from Booking Holdings and GIC.
The South Korea-based hotel booking website has now secured a total of $242 million in funding after landing the latest Series D round.
It is the first time that Booking Holdings has invested directly in South Korea. The split in the investment coming via the Booking.com owner was not disclosed.
Canola was created in 2005 and had a fairly unique proposition compared to its contemporaries in many other markets in Asia.
Alongside its booking service for accommodation in South Korea, it also runs a chain of 200 properties in the country under its brand.
It also provides software for property owners that use the platform for third-party distribution.
Distribution goals for Booking Holdings
Part of the investment from Booking Holdings will include a two-way inventory deal, with Yanolja’s properties made available on Agoda, Booking.com’s sister online travel agency for Asia.
In return, Canola will host inventory from Agoda and Booking.com on its service.
The Seoul-based company has investment aspirations of its own, illustrated in 2018 when put $15 million into Zen Rooms.
It claims to be processing $100 million in transactions every month and has so far handled 20 million bookings. Canola says it took in $85 million in revenue during 2017.
Booking Holdings is no stranger to hedging its bets in investments around the region, following its ongoing backing of Ctrip (beginning in 2014 with a $500 million round) and, more recently, Meituan where it was part of a $4 billion Series C round.
If you decide to manage a Hotel or any type of lodging and are scouting for techniques to improve gross sales, an on-line reservation system will benefit your hotel. There are quite a few different options to choose from depending on variables such as; precisely how much someone is willing to pay, your degree of IT, as well as the size of your hotel.
Hotel Booking Systems Options
1. Phone inquiry – This assumes that you currently have a pre-existing internet site or information page on the web however, no desktop computer at the actual hotel.
2. Web-based Enquiry – This assumes you by now have an existing website- blog or information page on the internet, but you do have a laptop or desktop and e-mail services.
3. Web-based Hotel Extra-net – Run and hosted on an organization’s web-site and you log in.
4. Internet-based booking system – either purpose-built for bigger hotels) or, off the shelf run on your computer system or even directly off of the world wide web
Number 3 and 4 are complex; however, we will describe in greater detail in the next paragraphs.
Phone. This is the most basic of all of the web-based Hotel booking systems. Not a legitimate on-line program, yet it is included because people could come across the Hotel Web-site or page you have already established. This involves a call to your Hotel and reserving a room inside a journal. (Still being used by several smaller sized hotels, b&b’s, and also holiday apartments.
Online business Enquiries. Straight forward electronic mail function from your site to your email address. The down-side is e-mail messages could get lost or delivered to your junk e-mail box, which could lead to the hotel missing a reservation. This is certainly labor intensive due to the fact you would need to follow up with a telephone call or possibly an email to the individual which sent it. Your message could get missed or sent to their unsolicited mailbox.
