GC Company, a South Korea’s unicorn OTA, has earnestly begun exploiting accommodation partners in Japan to increase outbound travelers from South Korea to Japan. A Japanese arm of the company was established in January 2024 to aim at annual transactions of about 110 billion yen for businesses in Japan by 2028.
According to Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), the number of visitors from South Korea in 2023 was up 24.9% to 6.96 million compared to 2019, and the company said that more than 60% of users plan to visit Japan again in 2024.
Th OTA service is used by 4 million users a month, mainly 20s and 30s in South Korea. Annual transactions in 2023 were up 16.7% year on year to about 192.5 billion yen, and operating profit grew by 54.2% to about 5.1 billion yen. The corporate value was estimated at about 132 billion yen in 2022.
