Strengthening the advanced reservation settlement service for inbound customers

Gurunavi, Inc. (Head office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Seiichiro Kubo; hereinafter called “Gurunavi”) started an advanced reservation settlement service in 2017, by teaming up with travel agencies in China and Taiwan. The service was launched in response to the growing need of tourists visiting Japan to make restaurant reservations, and it will also support the restaurants by providing a more efficient way of attracting customers.
As a result of the great feedback the service has received, from the beginning of December 2017 we will be teaming up with O2O - China’s leading review site that operates Dianping and Meituan. From the end of October, we will also be joining forces with Taiwan’s largest travel agency, Lion Travel, which is used by 450,000 Taiwanese tourists annually, to further strengthen our advanced reservation settlement service.

In 2017, the number of tourists visiting Japan reached the cumulative figure of 23.79 million in October. The highest number of 2,595 thousand for a single month was also reached, representing an increase of 21.5% when compared with the same month of the previous year (JNTO). Among them, the number of tourists visiting Japan from East Asia (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea) account for 75% of the total, and their need for restaurant reservations is expected to increase more and more. Indeed, since Gurunavi started operating the advanced reservation settlement service in 2017, the number of users has increased by about 10 times (based on the number of people using the service from April to October). We have also received great feedback from the restaurants, such as “We received a lot of reservations immediately after posting our restaurant information on the website,” and “We do receive daily cancellations, but with this service we can operate smoothly without worrying about cancellations,” etc. This has led to an increase in sales for the restaurants and a reduced risk of “no shows”.

By moving forward and increasing our alliance partners, we hope that the enormous number of members and users of our partnered companies will become potential customers, in addition to the existing users of [Gurunavi multi-language version], and we even expect a further expansion of the economic sphere of Gurunavi.
Gurunavi is planning to further expand, with new partners especially in the East Asia area, from the end of this year to the coming spring. Additionally, Gurunavi is successively developing a system which will allow the approximately 26,000 restaurants that are currently on [Gurunavi multi-language version] nationwide to use the advanced reservation settlement service in multiple languages.

■ Overview of our new partners

・Meituan – China : Partnership started from the beginning of December 2017.
In 2015, “Meituan”– the Chinese group purchasing website – merged with “Dianping” – China’s largest review site – to become “Meituan-Dianping”, which is now China’s largest O2O service platform (tickets, shopping, hotels, entertainment, dining) with over 600 million registered users. The corporate value has reached 30 billion dollars and it is ranked fourth in the world as an unlisted company.
*”Dianping” URL⇒https://www.dianping.com/
*”Meituan” URL⇒ www.meituan.com

・Lion Travel - Taiwan： Partnership started from the end of October 2017.
Since June 1985, the Lion Travel company based in Taiwan has been providing inbound and outbound travel services, including hotel accommodation arrangements, air ticketing, tour reservations, corporate travel, and more. The annual number of customers that visit Japan through Lion Travel is 450,000.
*URL⇒https://www.liontravel.com/

■ Overview of our existing partners

・Ctrip- China： Partners since 2017
Ctrip.com International Ltd. (CTRP) was founded in 1999 in Shanghai, China. The company is a leading provider of travel services including accommodation reservation, transportation ticketing, packaged tours and corporate travel management. The number of registered members are over 300million, booked by 1billion customers annually, annual mobile app utilization ratio is 70%, 2million customers which approximately 30% of Chinese tourists visiting Japan use Lion Travel.
*URL⇒http://www.ctrip.com/

・Kkday- Taiwan：Partnered since 2017
Kkday-Taiwan’s largest online travel company was founded in May 2014, users hit over 100,000 in October 2015, now providing over 6,000 tours. Kkday has branch offices in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia.

■ How the “advanced reservation settlement service” works

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