Junyoung Lee is the President of Expertise and Group CTO at Yanolja, in addition to the co-CEO of Yanolja Cloud. Since becoming a member of Yanolja in Could 2022, Junyoung has performed a pivotal position in driving the corporate’s digital transformation and international expertise technique. Initially serving as Govt Vice President of Engineering, he contributed considerably to advancing Yanolja’s technological capabilities. In April 2023, he was appointed co-CEO of Yanolja Cloud, the place he oversees the event of modern SaaS options for the journey and hospitality trade. By April 2024, he assumed the position of President of Expertise and Group CTO, strengthening Yanolja’s fame as a world tech chief.
Previous to Yanolja, Junyoung had a distinguished profession at Google, the place he labored for practically twenty years in numerous roles, together with Software program Engineer, Engineering Supervisor, and Engineering Director. He was the primary Korean worker at Google globally, and through his tenure, he contributed to quite a few groundbreaking engineering initiatives.
Junyoung’s earlier expertise consists of software program engineering roles at Yahoo and Samsung Electronics, the place he developed and honed his technical experience.
Yanolja is Korea’s main on-line journey company (OTA) which affords all journey and expertise associated companies to make journey comfy and satisfying for everybody. Yanolja Cloud is a hospitality options firm specializing in user-friendly and built-in cloud-based applied sciences tailor-made for the hospitality sector, focusing on prospects worldwide.
You’ve had an unimaginable journey from Google to Yanolja, together with a job in establishing Google Korea. What motivated you to transition from a tech big to a quickly rising firm like Yanolja?
My journey started as the primary Korean native speaker employed at Google HQ in California, the place I later helped arrange Google Korea. Over twenty years at Google, I witnessed how information and expertise can remodel lives and drive significant innovation. But, as impactful as these developments had been, the journey trade had lagged behind in adopting cutting-edge expertise.
Once I met Sujin Lee, Yanolja’s founder, his imaginative and prescient of addressing the inefficiencies and challenges in journey struck a chord. Journey entails dreaming, planning, reserving, and sharing—processes that generate immense quantities of knowledge. Nonetheless, this information has remained largely underutilized. Yanolja’s dedication to leveraging AI and superior information platforms to enhance these experiences was inspiring. It was a novel alternative to hitch an organization on the forefront of reworking a whole trade.
Yanolja’s daring imaginative and prescient, powered by AI and our proprietary information lake, permits us to refine and increase information to create Vertical AI options tailor-made for the journey and hospitality sectors. This strategy not solely enhances operational effectivity but in addition redefines buyer experiences, positioning Yanolja as a world chief in journey tech.
As a pacesetter within the AI house, what classes from Google and your earlier roles have been most impactful in shaping your strategy to driving AI innovation at Yanolja?
Two key classes have formed my strategy. First, expertise must be human-centered. The tempo of innovation typically outstrips folks’s capability to adapt, so intuitive design is important for broader adoption. Second, information is the inspiration of AI. If information is incomplete or flawed, AI outcomes will be inaccurate and even dangerous, very similar to a toddler appearing on deceptive experiences.
At Yanolja, we prioritize information integrity throughout all the journey worth chain. By making certain that the information flowing by our methods is correct, we ship safe, clear options for each our B2B companions and finish prospects. That is the place Yanolja’s Vertical AI strategy turns into important—we focus on AI options tailor-made for the journey trade, driving measurable outcomes that immediately improve profitability and buyer satisfaction.
How has your expertise working throughout completely different international locations and tech ecosystems (South Korea, Silicon Valley) influenced your management model and imaginative and prescient for expertise?
At Google in Silicon Valley, I collaborated with groups from all over the world on international companies, which taught me the significance of aligning various groups towards a typical aim. At Yanolja, I now lead R&D groups throughout Korea, India, Israel, and Europe, uniting them as “One Yanolja Group” to drive innovation and execute tasks collaboratively.
My Silicon Valley expertise bolstered the necessity to stability short-term enterprise priorities with long-term technological investments. Whereas quick options handle urgent challenges, sustainable innovation requires foundational work. At Yanolja, we combine information and AI to sort out right this moment’s enterprise wants whereas constructing a platform for future management within the journey tech trade.
How is Yanolja leveraging AI to rework the journey and hospitality trade, significantly in areas like operational effectivity and buyer expertise?
The journey trade has lengthy been gradual to embrace technological change. Many operations in hospitality and reserving are nonetheless guide or inefficient, limiting each productiveness and potential development. At Yanolja, we’ve launched AI-driven options to handle these gaps.
For instance, our Dynamic Pricing resolution makes use of AI and machine studying (ML) to automate real-time worth changes, immediately impacting lodge revenues by changing guide processes with smarter, data-driven choices. Equally, our AI-powered journey planning companies provide personalised itineraries and optimized journey routes, enhancing buyer experiences.
Past these examples, Yanolja applies AI throughout customer support, advertising, workflow optimization, and product growth. Our Vertical AI options are tailor-made to fulfill the distinctive wants of journey companies, enabling us to steer the trade’s transformation by creating modern, environment friendly, and customer-centric methods.
Yanolja operates in over 200 international locations. What challenges and alternatives include scaling AI options for such a various international viewers?
Scaling AI options globally requires understanding various market wants whereas leveraging shared insights. For instance, our Dynamic Pricing AI adapts seamlessly to markets like South Africa, India, and Korea utilizing a single mannequin that identifies common pricing patterns from our information lake.
One vital problem is overcoming language limitations. To deal with this, we’ve developed AI-powered instruments like context-aware picture translations, enabling non-Korean audio system to entry localized content material in English, Japanese and Chinese language. At present, Yanolja helps over 60 languages, reflecting our dedication to inclusivity and international accessibility.
Yanolja affords an built-in suite of options like cloud PMS, reserving engines, and cost methods. Are you able to share insights into how these methods use AI to reinforce productiveness and personalization?
We’ve built-in AI into our cloud-based lodge administration system (PMS) to streamline operations. As an example, our AI interface permits lodge managers to question duties like room assignments or operational studies conversationally, simplifying advanced processes.
Moreover, AI-powered customer support instruments assist us automate the classification and prioritization of inquiries, lowering response instances by 40%. These improvements, mixed with our Vertical AI options, guarantee operational effectivity and personalization for all stakeholders.
How does Yanolja’s proprietary Knowledge Lake assist unlock new AI purposes, and what position does information high quality play within the success of your options?
AI continues to unlock the potential of underutilized information, remodeling on-line journey companies (OTAs) into hyper-personalized journey brokers and enhancing buyer experiences. Yanolja’s give attention to Vertical AI ensures our options ship measurable affect, setting us aside as leaders within the evolving journey ecosystem.
As we glance forward, we envision AI not simply optimizing journey bookings or itineraries however enabling totally built-in, seamless journey experiences. AI-driven insights will empower companies to foretell and meet buyer wants extra successfully, making certain each facet of a traveler’s journey is personalised and optimized. To attain this, Yanolja is constructing a journey information platform tailor-made for the trade, incorporating connectivity, a single supply of fact by way of a knowledge lake, and AI/ML-based information applied sciences—all of that are important to sustaining information high quality and unlocking new purposes.
What developments do you see shaping the way forward for AI within the journey trade, and the way is Yanolja positioning itself to steer on this house?
AI is poised to revolutionize the journey trade by unlocking the huge potential of underutilized information. Over the following decade, we’ll see a shift from easy reserving platforms to extremely subtle, AI-driven brokers that present hyper-personalized journey experiences. These AI brokers is not going to solely assist vacationers plan however will even help in real-time decision-making throughout their journey.
At Yanolja, we’re on the forefront of this transformation by specializing in Vertical AI—creating specialised purposes that handle the distinctive challenges of the journey trade. Our data-driven options are already serving to companies optimize operations, personalize companies, and finally improve buyer satisfaction.
The long run will even see better integration of AI throughout all the journey journey, from the second a buyer goals about their journey to after they share their expertise post-trip. We’re positioning ourselves to steer this transformation by investing closely in AI capabilities that may proceed to disrupt and redefine how the journey trade operates.
As somebody who constructed and managed groups at Google Korea and now Yanolja, what recommendation do you might have for fostering innovation and collaboration in tech groups?
Firstly, it’s essential to have a transparent and sustainable imaginative and prescient and mission for what we goal to attain with expertise. Every individual brings distinctive strengths to the desk. Nonetheless, irrespective of how proficient a bunch of individuals is, if they aren’t aligned of their path, they threat falling behind within the quickly altering exterior atmosphere of the AI period. I imagine that what’s wanted right this moment will not be one genius who can’t collaborate, however a crew of 10 people with distinctive teamwork. It’s about taking 10 items of wooden—every completely different in form, measurement, and colour—and turning them into a novel masterpiece. The last word aim is to create one thing that improves the lives of individuals all over the world. This, I imagine, is the position of tech groups within the AI period.
The place do you see Yanolja within the subsequent 5–10 years, significantly in its quest to grow to be a world chief in journey expertise?
Leaving a well-established firm in Silicon Valley to hitch Yanolja was pushed by my aim to disrupt the journey trade globally as a tech firm, leveraging information. That course of is already underway, and the tempo is accelerating. On the core of this transformation is AI. Innovation by expertise is reshaping the world, and as a tech govt, it’s my position and accountability to make sure that AI-driven options create companies that meet buyer wants and finally drive Yanolja’s success.
Trying forward, Yanolja goals to be the inspiration for international journey innovation, leveraging our Vertical AI capabilities to construct a unified, environment friendly journey ecosystem. Over the following decade, we envision our AI-driven options not solely enhancing operational efficiencies but in addition creating completely new methods for companies and customers to expertise journey, disrupting the trade in methods we’ve solely simply begun to discover.
Thanks for the good interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to Yanolja or Yanolja Cloud.
