Yanolja is a number one international know-how firm providing complete data-driven companies to boost experiences for each journey business enterprises and vacationers. Yanolja’s cloud-based platform connects over 1.3 million journey firms throughout 206 international locations, delivering vertical AI companies that enhance effectivity and profitability for companies whereas elevating the standard of experiences for vacationers.
Previous to Yanolja, Junyoung had a distinguished profession at Google, the place he labored for almost twenty years in varied roles, together with Software program Engineer, Engineering Supervisor, and Engineering Director. He was the primary Korean worker at Google globally, and through his tenure, he contributed to quite a few groundbreaking engineering initiatives.
Junyoung’s earlier expertise contains software program engineering roles at Yahoo and Samsung Electronics, the place he developed and honed his technical experience.
You’ve had an unimaginable journey from Google to Yanolja, together with a job in establishing Google Korea. What motivated you to transition from a tech big to a quickly rising firm like Yanolja?
My journey started as the primary Korean native speaker employed at Google HQ in California, the place I later helped arrange Google Korea. Over twenty years at Google, I witnessed how information and know-how can remodel lives and drive significant innovation. But, as impactful as these developments had been, the journey business had lagged behind in adopting cutting-edge know-how.
Once I met Sujin Lee, Yanolja’s founder, his imaginative and prescient of addressing the inefficiencies and challenges in journey struck a chord. Journey includes dreaming, planning, reserving, and sharing—processes that generate immense quantities of information. Nonetheless, this information has remained largely underutilized. Yanolja’s dedication to leveraging AI and superior information platforms to enhance these experiences was inspiring. It was a singular alternative to hitch an organization on the forefront of remodeling a whole business.
Yanolja’s daring imaginative and prescient, powered by AI and our proprietary information lake, permits us to refine and increase information to create Vertical AI options tailor-made for the journey and hospitality sectors. This strategy not solely enhances operational effectivity but additionally redefines buyer experiences, positioning Yanolja as a world chief in journey tech.
As a pacesetter within the AI house, what classes from Google and your earlier roles have been most impactful in shaping your strategy to driving AI innovation at Yanolja?
Two key classes have formed my strategy. First, know-how must be human-centered. The tempo of innovation typically outstrips individuals’s capability to adapt, so intuitive design is crucial for broader adoption. Second, information is the muse of AI. If information is incomplete or flawed, AI outcomes could be inaccurate and even dangerous, very similar to a toddler appearing on deceptive experiences.
At Yanolja, we prioritize information integrity throughout your entire journey worth chain. By guaranteeing that the information flowing by way of our programs is correct, we ship safe, clear options for each our B2B companions and finish prospects. That is the place Yanolja’s Vertical AI strategy turns into crucial—we concentrate on AI options tailor-made for the journey business, driving measurable outcomes that immediately improve profitability and buyer satisfaction.
How has your expertise working throughout completely different international locations and tech ecosystems (South Korea, Silicon Valley) influenced your management model and imaginative and prescient for know-how?
At Google in Silicon Valley, I collaborated with groups from around the globe on international companies, which taught me the significance of aligning various groups towards a typical objective. At Yanolja, I now lead R&D groups throughout Korea, India, Israel, and Europe, uniting them as “One Yanolja Workforce” to drive innovation and execute tasks collaboratively.
My Silicon Valley expertise strengthened the necessity to steadiness short-term enterprise priorities with long-term technological investments. Whereas instant options handle urgent challenges, sustainable innovation requires foundational work. At Yanolja, we combine information and AI to deal with in the present day’s enterprise wants whereas constructing a platform for future management within the journey tech business.
How is Yanolja leveraging AI to rework the journey and hospitality business, significantly in areas like operational effectivity and buyer expertise?
The journey business has lengthy been gradual to embrace technological change. Many operations in hospitality and reserving are nonetheless guide or inefficient, limiting each productiveness and potential development. At Yanolja, we’ve launched AI-driven options to deal with these gaps.
For instance, our Dynamic Pricing answer makes use of AI and machine studying (ML) to automate real-time worth changes, immediately impacting resort revenues by changing guide processes with smarter, data-driven selections. Equally, our AI-powered journey planning companies supply customized itineraries and optimized journey routes, enhancing buyer experiences.
Past these examples, Yanolja applies AI throughout customer support, advertising, workflow optimization, and product growth. Our Vertical AI options are tailor-made to fulfill the distinctive wants of journey companies, enabling us to steer the business’s transformation by creating revolutionary, environment friendly, and customer-centric programs.
Yanolja operates in over 200 international locations. What challenges and alternatives include scaling AI options for such a various international viewers?
Scaling AI options globally requires understanding various market wants whereas leveraging shared insights. For instance, our Dynamic Pricing AI adapts seamlessly to markets like South Africa, India, and Korea utilizing a single mannequin that identifies common pricing patterns from our information lake.
One vital problem is overcoming language boundaries. To handle this, we’ve developed AI-powered instruments like context-aware picture translations, enabling non-Korean audio system to entry localized content material in English, Japanese and Chinese language. At the moment, Yanolja helps over 60 languages, reflecting our dedication to inclusivity and international accessibility.
Yanolja gives an built-in suite of options like cloud PMS, reserving engines, and fee programs. Are you able to share insights into how these programs use AI to boost productiveness and personalization?
We’ve built-in AI into our cloud-based resort administration system (PMS) to streamline operations. As an illustration, our AI interface permits resort managers to question duties like room assignments or operational experiences conversationally, simplifying advanced processes.
Moreover, AI-powered customer support instruments assist us automate the classification and prioritization of inquiries, lowering response occasions by 40%. These improvements, mixed with our Vertical AI options, guarantee operational effectivity and personalization for all stakeholders.
How does Yanolja’s proprietary Information Lake assist unlock new AI functions, and what position does information high quality play within the success of your options?
AI continues to unlock the potential of underutilized information, reworking on-line journey businesses (OTAs) into hyper-personalized journey brokers and enhancing buyer experiences. Yanolja’s give attention to Vertical AI ensures our options ship measurable impression, setting us aside as leaders within the evolving journey ecosystem.
As we glance forward, we envision AI not simply optimizing journey bookings or itineraries however enabling absolutely built-in, seamless journey experiences. AI-driven insights will empower companies to foretell and meet buyer wants extra successfully, guaranteeing each side of a traveler’s journey is customized and optimized. To attain this, Yanolja is constructing a journey information platform tailor-made for the business, incorporating connectivity, a single supply of fact by way of an information lake, and AI/ML-based information applied sciences—all of that are crucial to sustaining information high quality and unlocking new functions.
What developments do you see shaping the way forward for AI within the journey business, and the way is Yanolja positioning itself to steer on this house?
AI is poised to revolutionize the journey business by unlocking the huge potential of underutilized information. Over the following decade, we are going to see a shift from easy reserving platforms to extremely refined, AI-driven brokers that present hyper-personalized journey experiences. These AI brokers won’t solely assist vacationers plan however can even help in real-time decision-making throughout their journey.
At Yanolja, we’re on the forefront of this transformation by specializing in Vertical AI—creating specialised functions that handle the distinctive challenges of the journey business. Our data-driven options are already serving to companies optimize operations, personalize companies, and finally improve buyer satisfaction.
The long run can even see larger integration of AI throughout your entire journey journey, from the second a buyer desires about their journey to after they share their expertise post-trip. We’re positioning ourselves to steer this transformation by investing closely in AI capabilities that can proceed to disrupt and redefine how the journey business operates.
As somebody who constructed and managed groups at Google Korea and now Yanolja, what recommendation do you’ve gotten for fostering innovation and collaboration in tech groups?
At first, it’s vital to have a transparent and sustainable imaginative and prescient and mission for what we purpose to attain with know-how. Every particular person brings distinctive strengths to the desk. Nonetheless, irrespective of how proficient a gaggle of individuals is, if they aren’t aligned of their course, they danger falling behind within the quickly altering exterior setting of the AI period. I imagine that what’s wanted in the present day just isn’t one genius who can’t collaborate, however a staff of 10 people with distinctive teamwork. It’s about taking 10 items of wooden—every completely different in form, dimension, and shade—and turning them into a singular masterpiece. The last word objective is to create one thing that improves the lives of individuals around the globe. This, I imagine, is the position of tech groups within the AI period.
The place do you see Yanolja within the subsequent 5–10 years, significantly in its quest to turn into a world chief in journey know-how?
Leaving a well-established firm in Silicon Valley to hitch Yanolja was pushed by my objective to disrupt the journey business globally as a tech firm, leveraging information. That course of is already underway, and the tempo is accelerating. On the core of this transformation is AI. Innovation by way of know-how is reshaping the world, and as a tech govt, it’s my position and duty to make sure that AI-driven options create companies that meet buyer wants and finally drive Yanolja’s success.
Wanting forward, Yanolja goals to be the muse for international journey innovation, leveraging our Vertical AI capabilities to construct a unified, environment friendly journey ecosystem. Over the following decade, we envision our AI-driven options not solely enhancing operational efficiencies but additionally creating solely new methods for companies and customers to expertise journey, disrupting the business in methods we’ve solely simply begun to discover.
Thanks for the good interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to Yanolja.
