Singapore, October 16th, 2019 ZEN Rooms, one of the leading economy and mid-range hotel franchises in Southeast Asia, today announced it had signed a definitive agreement with travel group Yanolja regarding additional investment, acquisition of early investors stakes and the signing of a wide strategic alliance.
It combines ZENs top-rated budget hotel franchise business with Yanoljas scale, hospitality technologies and the backing by the global leader in Online Travel, Booking Holdings, thus granting ZEN unique competitive advantages in both hotel technology and sales distribution.
Nathan Boublil, co-founder & CEO of ZEN, comments: We started ZEN exactly 4 years ago to make budget accommodation in Southeast Asia more affordable and safer.
We have proudly built ZEN into the top-rated budget hotel franchise in the region and honor to be Yanoljas 1st international investment.
Jongyoon Kim, CEO of Online Business at Yanolja, adds: Since first investing in ZEN, we have shared the same vision of operational excellence and customer-centricity radically improve the SE Asian hospitality market.
In the last 12 months, the ZEN team has taken major steps to fulfill this vision and has grown exponentially while displaying top inventory quality.
Highlights
- Yanolja, Korea’s billion-dollar travel group, double down on ZEN Rooms one year after investing US$15M in 2018. Through this transaction, Yanolja is investing additional funds in the Company, purchasing stakes from early investors and announcing a wide strategic alliance between the two groups.
- ZEN joins forces with one of the most technologically innovative travel groups and its backers Booking Holdings to create the first full-service budget & mid-range hospitality group in SEA
- ZEN will heavily deploy technology to continue to improve Southeast Asia’s hospitality sector, enhance customer experience and lower hotels’ operating costs
- ZEN has achieved market-leading customer satisfaction ratings in its franchise business, quadrupled revenue in the past year and became in Q4 2018 the largest hotel chain in the Philippines
