Companies such as Expedia and Agoda dominate hotel bookings in Taiwan and other countries, but AsiaYo founder C.K. Cheng noticed small, independent guesthouses known locally as minsu were a popular option for travellers in Taiwan.
He figured the minsu privately run and lacking concierge desks could use a partner that would provide multilingual customer service.
It’s a similar space to peer-to-peer booking platform AirBnB, but Cheng says the peer-to-peer model poses challenges for these operators, with language barriers in particular making it hard for them to deal with international travellers. And by targeting only licensed operators, Cheng avoided the well-publicised regulatory hurdles...
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