South Korea’s leading travel platform, MyRealTrip, has launched a new service called “Naver Tour” in partnership with Naver, the country’s largest Internet company.
Naver Tour was co-designed and developed by the two companies, said MyRealTrip’s CEO Donggun Lee. Naver offered the platform and his company developed the search engine, and Naver Tour will allow travellers to compare and book tours seamlessly and effortlessly.
Naver, South Korea’s largest search engine, has been inching its way into travel, offering travel search powered by partners such as HotelsCombined. This latest development takes it into another category of travel, tours & activities.
Lee founded MyRealTrip in 2012 as a peer-to-peer service matching tour guides with travellers and has since expanded the business to include tours and activities, and accommodation.
Donggun Lee enjoying Yosemite National Park
He said he felt it necessary to involve Naver in this stage of MyRealTrip’s evolution because “Naver is one of the biggest Internet companies in Asia, not to mention in South Korea. A lot of travellers, regardless of the generation, are gathering and planning their trips through their research online. We expect that MyRealTrip can acquire a lot of customers through this partnership.”
He said that fewer people were installing new apps these days “which means the cost of customer acquisition is getting higher and higher. We see this partnership can lower the cost”.
Asked about the financial details of the partnership, Lee said there was no equity exchange. “However, we saw this collaboration as an opportunity that not many start-ups can have.”
Asked if he was concerned about the brand erosion for MyRealTrip since this is branded Naver Tour, he said, “Well, I cannot say that I am not concerned at all, but when you get to understand the metasearch service/ algorithm, it won’t bother you much. Though the travellers do detour, once they click our website, the ultimate decision and payment will be made on our website.”
He said there were no plans to offer this search engine solution to other platforms that might want travel content.
His focus remains building MyRealTrip into “South Korea’s No 1 Travel Platform”.
“We have been expanding our service categories to offer seamless booking experiences to our customers. We are evolving to be a must-visit platform if you are planning your trip.”
Two of MyRealTrip’s top selling activities: Osaka Amazing Pass (left) and Vatican Tour (Rome, Italy). It has more than 230,000 customer reviews on its site.
He’s of course excited to see the heightened activity in the tours & activities segment. “As one of the market players, I see more positive opportunities. You can see that a lot of investments are being made in the market. This will lead to development in tech and tour products and improve their quantity and quality.”
One of MyRealTrip’s key differentiators is its customer reviews of which it has collected 230,000.
Said Lee, “MyRealTrip has been focusing on getting customer reviews since our first service launch. Accumulated credible reviews help customers make right decisions and it is one of the biggest reasons why customers are coming back to MyRealTrip. I can say it brought us to where we are today and will bring us to tomorrow.”
Since its founding, MyRealTrip has raised US$12m, offers 15,000 activities and has grown to 72 staff. In July, it achieved gross merchandise value (GMV) of over US$11m, a 300% growth compared to the same period last year.
