Travel activities startup Klook bags series A funding ahead of Southeast Asia push

(Photo by Marc Veraart)

Travel activities startup Klook announced this week that it has bagged US$5 million in series A funding from investors including Matrix Partners and China Growth Capital.

Klook, based in Hong Kong, focuses on selling travel experiences and packages for tourist hotspots across Asia. That means everything from tickets for attractions to bespoke offerings like a supercar driving experience on Singapore’s F1 track, or a lesson in making kimchi in Seoul. Rather than doing flights or hotels, which is already a crowded market, the team is going after a newer sector where there’s no tech giant leading the way – although lots of other startups are trying the same thing.

We profiled the young site earlier in the summer when it picked up US$1.5 million in seed funding. Since then it has grown to the point where it’s “serving thousands of travelers a day,” the team says.

Expanding

The Klook gang is now setting up an office in Singapore to be the regional headquarters for Southeast Asia. It already has offices in Shenzhen to cover mainland China as well as in Taipei for the Taiwan market.

Co-founder Eric Gnock Fah calls the series A round “a strong vote of confidence for Klook’s team,” and he also heralded two new strategic advisors – one who works for Agoda, and the other who heads the planning department at the China National Tourism Administration.

Klook wants to tap into Asia’s travel boom by grabbing tourists coming into Asia as well as locals traveling within the continent – plus the all-important Chinese outbound tourism surge. “Five out of the top 10 most visited cities in the world are in Asia – Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok,” points out co-founder Ethan Lin.

As Asia brings in more tourism, the Klook team is excited by industry forecasts showing that half of all global passenger traffic will be within or from Asia-Pacific by 2030, up from the current 37 percent.