Voyagin will focus on accelerating expansion of its team and growing services
The Japan team of Voyagin
Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has acquired an undisclosed majority share in travel discovery and booking portal Voyagin.
The company will continue to operate under its current CEO Masashi Takahashi, with all 13 employees working out of its Tokyo-based headquarters.
“We chose to go down the acquisition path because of the value-add that a company like Rakuten offers in terms of their understanding of marketplaces, knowledge of the travel space — it’s the largest OTA (online travel agent) in Japan — ability to work with it to drive even more tourists to Japan, and connections for hiring and partnerships,” Voyagin COO Tushar Khandelwal told e27.
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Launched in 2012, Voyagin’s travel experiences marketplace allows users to discover a curated list of tours and activities in Asia. Presently, the site has 1,800 activities in over 50 destinations, including more than 1,000 experiences in Japan concentrated around Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Okinawa.
Voyagin is a graduate of Japanese Incubator Open Lab, with early investors and advisors including Jungle Ventures, Facebook’s APAC VP Dan Neary, MakeMyTrip Co-founder Sachin Bhatia, and Travelmob Co-founders Turochas Fuad and Prashant Kirtane.
Voyagin into the Olympics and beyond
Aside from expanding its company, including engineering, sales and operations teams, Voyagin will be leveraging Rakuten’s resources to grow its services.
“At the moment, we’re a marketplace to mostly book private tour guides and activities. With the recent acquisition and investment, we look forward to offering more products to become an online player to book any ‘thing to do’ in Japan. This includes things like vacation packages, bus tours, tickets, and transportation,” Khandelwal explained.
“Right now, we’re focussed on Tokyo, Kyoto, Okinawa and Bali as our core markets, but we look forward to expanding into more areas of Japan, Southeast Asia and China,” he added.
He further said that Voyagin is integrating into Rakuten offerings for inbound travellers to Japan to boost Rakuten as the online travel agent destination for flights, hotels, and now the last mile of tours and activities.
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Also in the works is the upcoming Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, where the newly-matched duo will be strengthening its services to meet the demand for tourism activities with the influx of foreigners visiting.
And as for future investments to fuel Voyagin’s offerings, Rakuten, with its over US$20 billion market cap and annual sales of over US$5 billion, has its back.
“We don’t have the distraction of having to fundraise again,” he said.
What about the competition?
Khandelwal shared that while there are not as many competitors focussing on tours and activities as flights or hotels, there are still a decent number of services focussing on the travel marketplace space.
“Our two biggest global competitors are Viator and GetYourGuide, but in the markets that we are currently focussed on, we either match or surpass their traction,” he concluded.
The post Rakuten acquires Japanese travel discovery platform Voyagin appeared first on e27.