ALBAWABA - At the beginning of this century, Lee Seo-jin, a hotel cleaner, could not have imagined that he would become one of the world's billionaires and the Chairman of the travel and accommodation services company, Yanolja.
Lee's experience as a hotel worker inspired him to launch a hotel booking website in 2007, which has now become a famous travel application, downloaded over 57 million times and recognized as a global phenomenon.
The success of the application helped Lee build his own wealth, estimated at $1.2 billion today. He owns approximately one-third of Yanolja, along with his wife and daughters. Forbes ranks him 26th on the list of the 50 richest people in South Korea.
Lee's Life-changing Venture:
However, Yanolja, the travel and hospitality company, emerged out of necessity rather than a passion for travel. Lee faced hardships at a young age and spent much of his childhood with his family. When he turned 23, he worked as a room cleaner in a hotel that provided short-term accommodation and offered him a salary and a place to stay.
In a previous interview with an American media outlet five years ago, which CNBC reported, Lee said that he started saving money, invested in stocks, and later launched a company in a different field. After its failure, he returned to the hospitality sector.
In 2005, he launched a platform for hotel reviews, which eventually evolved into Yanolja two years later. Lee set the goal of revamping hotels and convincing travelers that they could stay in budget-friendly areas safely.
In June 2019, Yanolja became the eighth unicorn company in South Korea, valued at over a billion dollars after a successful funding round.
Two years later, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 acquired a minority stake in Yanolja for $1.7 billion, valuing the company at $6.7 billion, according to Forbes.
The deal with SoftBank sparked widespread speculation about an initial public offering for Yanolja, but it has not happened yet.
In July of the previous year, Lee stated in a statement that the company was not in a rush to go public, as the hospitality industry was still recovering from the repercussions of the COVID-19 crisis.
Meanwhile, Yanolja has been striving to expand beyond travel booking services. In 2021, it launched Yanolja Cloud, an artificial intelligence software targeting other hospitality and entertainment platforms.
Currently, 19 million people use Yanolja's programming services for booking, travel, and property management operations.
