Korea’s Billion-Dollar Travel Group Yanolja Doubles Down on ZEN Rooms to Create Future of Hospitality in Southeast Asia

Wazzup Pilipinas!

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

Singapore, October 16th 2019 -- ZEN Rooms (“ZEN”, “Company”), 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. Yanolja is the leading travel group in South Korea, backed by Booking Holdings and GIC, among others. Yanolja was the lead strategic investor in the company’s US$15M funding round in 2018, with rights to invest further. Early investor Asia Internet Holdings (Joint Venture of Rocket Internet and Ooredoo Telecom) has agreed to exit its stake to Yanolja. RedBadge Pacific and SBI Korea remain investors, and Access Ventures join as co-investors.

The alliance of ZEN and Yanolja creates the leading economy & mid-range hospitality group in Southeast Asia. It combines ZEN’s top-rated budget hotel franchise business with Yanolja’s scale, hospitality technologies and the backing by the global leader in Online Travel, Booking Holdings (behind Booking.com, Agoda, Priceline.com, Kayak etc), thus granting ZEN unique competitive advantages in both hotel technology and sales distribution. The groups will work to heavily deploy automation technology to enhance customer experience, further reduce budget hotels’ operating costs and reinvent budget hospitality across Southeast Asia.

ZEN Rooms is today one of the largest hotel franchises in Southeast Asia, with 13,000 rooms under franchise. Since Yanolja’s investment in mid 2018, ZEN has grown revenues 400% and has become in Q2 2019 the largest hotel chain in fast-emerging Philippines, with 5,500 rooms under franchise.

Southeast Asia is today the world’s fastest growing travel market, fueled by exponential domestic and regional demand of young travelers and millennials (e.g. the number of Chinese visitors has quadrupled in the past decade[1]). Yet, the value-for-money proposition of its budget hotel sector has historically been defective, plagued by several issues: fragmentation, poor hygiene & safety standards, lack of training and low technology use.

ZEN was founded in 2015 to improve the state of budget hospitality and bring much needed operational and technological efficiency to the estimated 2 million independent economy rooms in the region. Thousands of hotel owners have since joined ZEN’s franchises to improve their revenue, optimize their cost base and increase the long-term value of their property. These efficiency gains ultimately benefit travelers who can enjoy safer and better value-for-money stays.

With a deep emphasis on customer satisfaction, ZEN franchisees have enjoyed the best average guest ratings on Booking.com for two years in a row.

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 were honored to be Yanolja’s 1st international investment. With this strategic alliance, we are joining forces with one of the most technologically innovative travel groups and its unique backers Booking Holdings to create the first full service budget & mid-range hospitality group in SEA, able to deploy world-class technology infrastructure in IoT R&D, automation, hardware and software to all hotels in Southeast Asia. This alliance will greatly benefit our ability to serve our hotel clients and ultimately the travelers of the entire region”.

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 to 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. With this exciting agreement, Yanolja plans to fully support ZEN to solidify its status as the market leading full-stack hospitality company in the region".

Recommendations and Tips for Traveling to the Philippines

Wazzup Pilipinas!

We have suggested that you love this country as much or more than us. For this, this page is full of recommendations and tips for traveling to the Philippines for free, tricks from traveler to traveler that we want to have to us when we first set foot on this land.

While one of the best things when traveling through the islands is to carry over a little and make new "discoveries", here we want to make a summary of the basic variables that you should consider when designing and implementing them. Follow us because we will give you the main recommendations and tips for traveling to the Philippines and not fail in the effort.


1. Try to devote enough time to your trip, the main advice for traveling to the Philippines

It is true that we are not used to it, because we spend months every time we go, but the recommendation to travel to the Philippines is: don't skimp on time.

We cannot tell you not to go if you only have 7 days, but we realize that we are very sad to imagine a short trip to a few kilometers from home. Only monetary costs and time from long-term flights will make you consider the time you will spend, but this is an important variable: transfers in the Philippines are very heavy.

In most cases, every time you change your destination within the country, that means you have to invest one day on your trip. With that, the less time you have, the greater the feeling that you spend the day by plane, bus, jeepney, trycicle, ferry, etc.

Our advice is that you don't spend less than 15 full days (not including international flights) traveling through the Philippines. In our opinion, a far more reasonable number is 20 days.

2. Find out about the weather during your trip

The Philippines, due to its geographical position, has a different tropical climate and climate zone. To make a big summary, the climate in the Philippines is summarized in 3 epochs:

Dry and mild season: from December to February.

Dry and hot season: from March to May.

Rainy season: from June to November.

Considering the weather and the flow of tourists, we believe that the best time to travel to the Philippines is in February and March.

Even so, don't separate your head or throw away the idea of ​​traveling to the Philippines while you are on vacation. Although some rain patterns or their absence can be predicted, the weather is unpredictable. In fact, it is very possible to travel to the Philippines in July and August.


3. Search for flights long beforehand

Tip: find your flight as soon as possible, especially if you are traveling in high season. In the summer months and in periods of high demand such as Easter or Christmas, prices tend to rise like foam.


4. Know everything you can do in the Philippines

This may look very clear, but it is the key. There are as many trips to the Philippines as there are travelers and moments. In many cases we are blinded by the typical photos we see on Instagram, but there is no important or unique trip to the Philippines.

Over the years of traveling across the country and designing travel plans for travelers, we have repeatedly confirmed that "for taste, color". What we love, others may seem indifferent or, even more, hate it. While it's true that this can only be verified on the site, one of our tips for traveling to the Philippines and not "screwing up" is to inform you in advance about everything you can do.

In the Philippines there is always room to get out of the ordinary. For example, we went to Romblon when almost nothing was written on the internet and, like this area, there were many: Masbate, Linapacan, Leyte, Mati ... From traveler to traveler: open the map on Google Maps and start pinning interesting sites for you, for example when you go from Batangas to Caticlan.


5. Stop to design a route and try to make it unpretentious

We warned you: this is the most difficult.

Maybe you put dozens of flags on the map, but now it's time to find out how to join them, how long to move from one point to another and how many days to offer for each site. This in a country like Thailand, with a developing tourism infrastructure, can be relatively easy, but in the Philippines, believe me, it isn't. This is part of the Filipino charm, but, if you don't count it, you might hate transfers and, therefore, don't enjoy the trip. A very important recommendation for traveling to the Philippines is: count 1 day for each transfer between islands and thus you will not catch your finger.

As simple as it seems for you the first time, because the islands are very close, it is very likely that, to move from one side to the other you have to combine several transportation. For example, Camiguin and Bohol are separated by 60 kilometers, but the route between them is:

- Trycicle, jeepney or motorboat from your accommodation in Camiguin to Balbagon port (about 20 minutes).

- Ferry to Jagna (about 3-4 hours).

- Transfer from Jagna to Loboc or Panglao (depending on how you do it, but will rarely go down for 2 hours).

As you can see, it will be strange if you need less than 6 hours to do this tour and, given that in the Philippines it is nighttime around 6:00 pm, you will invest a large portion of your travel day. To this added the possibility of suffering cancellations and delays in flights, ships and buses. In the Philippines not everything works perfectly and these things happen, especially in tropical climates

6. Traveling safely, the main recommendation for traveling to the Philippines

Even though we told you, is it safe to travel to the Philippines? Everything you need to know about the "dangers" and Vaccines for the Philippines relating to vaccinations, it is important for you to listen to us with this issue: travel insurance. In the Philippines, outside major cities such as Cebu and Manila, health centers or hospitals in the province are very limited. This means that if you have a serious problem (hopefully not) such as a car or motorcycle accident, it is advisable to move immediately to Manila or Cebu.

If this happens to you, having help from a good insurance company will save you not only economic dislike (which may not be small), but also logistical ones (they will take care of everything and you only have to worry about improvement) and from psychological ones.

7. Do not idealize everything before arriving

That the Philippines has some of the best beaches in the world, nobody can deny it. That you can do some of the best dive dives on the planet too. Filipinos are friendly, open to tourists and friends, the food is delicious, prices are good ... There are many perfect things about the Philippines! BUT, not everything is ideal.

Obviously, on websites, on Instagram and in any digital medium (even if you talk to the vast majority of travelers) what is most shown is the beautiful. Surely in our own city or country we take pictures of the beautiful things and not the dumps, the most disadvantaged neighborhoods and the plate of food that we have not been more instagrammable, right?

PHLPost Releases CCP Golden Anniversary Stamps

Wazzup Pilipinas!

The Philippine Postal Corporation (PHLPost) releases new commemorative stamps to celebrate the 50th year anniversary of the establishment of Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) in the country.

September 8, 1969 marked the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ official inauguration. Since then, it has been the home to many gems of Philippine art. The CCP has housed acclaimed productions in music, theater and dance, iconic works of art, great artists, and irreplaceable resources on Philippine culture and history.

The Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) is considered as the national center for the arts. It has launched initiatives showcasing excellent art forms, the bolstering of art education and art appreciation.

Throughout its 50 years of existence, the CCP has stimulated the creation of artistic content now considered as pillars of Philippine art. Its programs include Production and Exhibition, Arts Education, Outreach and Exchange and Culture Content Development.

PHLPost has printed 30,000 copies of the commemorative stamp which are being sold at P12 each. Graphic Artist Irma Jane C. Junio designed the stamps featuring the digital rendition of the iconic façade and fountain of the CCP.

The stamp and official first day covers of the commemorative 50th anniversary of CCP are now available at the Philatelic Counter, Manila and Metro Manila Post Offices and look for Ms. Salome Arao (02) 527-0108; Postal Area 8 - Cagayan De Oro-Cecille Araco Cotapte-

09064966880; Postal Area 7 – Davao-Rey Navarez Basilan, 09999923035; Postal Area 4 - San Pablo- Nena Panganiban-09157096217; Postal Area 5 - Mandaue City- Rachel Betos;

09222401317-Postal Area 2 - Baguio City-Marites Paredes-09064805058. #pilipinasphilately #philippinestamps #philately.