Rakuten, one of the Japan’s leading OTA, announced on April 28 2016 an investment of $2.5 million (approximately 275 million JPY) in Xola, a U.S. booking management system provider for activity-related business companies. The Xola’s management system is a cloud-typed service to provide leisure activity providers with booking, promotion and customer management functions. Xola provides the service in the U.S. market mainly today.
Purchasing Voyagin, a local activity platform, last year, Rakuten enhances a C2C business to offer local activities to international visitors in Japan. Through the investment to Xola, Rakuten is also accelerating a B2B business in the activity booking field, expecting the market in Japan will grow.
In Japanese
