Klook CEO on scaling through shocks, not building what’s ‘cool’

Before Ethan Lin and Eric Gnock Fah co-founded Klook in 2014, both worked as investment bankers in Hong Kong.

A trip to Nepal a year earlier had changed the course of their careers, inspiring them to rethink how people discover and book travel experiences. They later brought in software engineer Bernie Xiong as the company’s third co-founder.

Lin, who previously worked at Citi and Standard Chartered, has since spent more than a decade building Klook into one of Asia’s largest travel experiences platforms. The firm reached unicorn status in 2018 and has expanded beyond Asia Pacific in recent years to markets like the US – now one of its largest.

Gross bookings from users outside Asia has risen 13.4% over the past three years, as American travelers take a growing interest in Asia-Pacific destinations. It’s also leaning on more than 30,000 content creators globally to drive growth.

The company, which has raised over US$1 billion to date, now offers more than 500,000 experiences globally and has facilitated more than 140 million trips. In 2023, it announced that it had achieved profitability for the first time.

In November 2025, Klook filed for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, hoping to raise between US$300 million and US$500 million. It was later reported that it was delaying the IPO to “early 2026.” Lin declined to comment on the status of its listing plans, however.

In this interview, which took place on the sidelines of Tech in Asia Conference 2026, we spoke with Lin about Klook’s journey, the changing travel market, and what comes next for the company.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

You and co-founder Gnock Fah were investment bankers in Hong Kong, and a trip to Nepal changed your career trajectories. What about that experience pushed you both to quit your jobs and set up Klook?

Back then, it was 2013. We were not yet 30.

We had built a few years of our careers, and we were still young enough that we wanted to do something very different.

When you are walking out of the city, coming from Hong Kong and Singapore, it’s very convenient to travel around. In Nepal, though, it’s so difficult to look for things to do.

We would carry a pile of cash to spend, yet there were no reviews or consistent information. There was no way for us to know if we ever got scammed. So we did a lot of work to make sure our travel experience went very well.