The firm’s app offers a wide range of accommodation options across the nation. Users can book rooms at a discounted price and check out pictures of the rooms before making reservations either for a short-term stay -- usually from four to eight hours -- or an overnight stay. Yanolja also shows the nearest motel rooms currently available.

The company prides itself on matching users with comfortable and affordable motels that are far from the “love motels” noted for poor sanitary conditions and tacky interior decoration.

“Travelers in Korea tend to spend more money on what to do and eat than where to stay,” said Lee, stressing that the motels Yanolja works with best fit the Korean tourism model. For visitors from china, the firm offers services in Chinese.

Another feature setting Yanolja apart is its focus on educating motel operators and the staff to keep facilities professional and up-to-date. The programs are run together with a state-run tourism agency.

“These education programs, aimed at upgrading motel services, are a part of the firm’s efforts to change the bad perceptions of the public toward motels,” the CEO said.

Yanolja’s business portfolio also offers consulting and marketing to motel-booking, and connecting builders with would-be “moteliers.”

Lee’s mid- and long-term goal is to achieve the 1 trillion won ($893 million) sales milestone.

“We’re aiming for an initial public offering by the year 2020,” said the CEO. “Then the firm will deserve the name as a trailblazer for spearheading the accommodation industry.”


From zero to CEO 


Many people say they want to be rich, but they do not know how. Even if they know the secret, they easily fall off the track. But not Lee. Lee worked tirelessly to break the vicious cycle of poverty.

So instead of just dreaming, Lee started by trying to define the state of being rich.

“The book ‘Rich Dad and Poor Dad’ defines the rich as those who have a system that guarantees an inflow of money even when they rest or sleep without working themselves,” he said. 

He first got his feet in the stock trading and real estate auction markets with 40 million won, which he saved while working as an engineer at a local firm for his alternative compulsory military service.

His investment was a complete failure.

After becoming completely broke, Lee began working at a motel, which offered both food and accommodations.

After a couple of years, he received a promotion and began getting monthly wages of 2.5 million won, higher than an average motel worker.

As a housekeeper, a bell boy, a parking agent and whatever else, he had to work from 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. with little time to rest or have proper meals. After saving around 50 million won, Lee started a salad business. That went belly up in just six months.

The self-made CEO admitted that, at the time, he did not know a thing about running a business.

“Everything from marketing to pricing purely came from my imagination, and not based on the analysis of the market and consumers. So it was obvious I was going to fail,” Lee said.



Third time’s a charm



With two failures under his belt, Lee was deep in despair at first, but the sense of depression and shame was gone after realizing he was still young -- just 27 years old.

“By simple arithmetic, I thought I would be able to live more than 53 years and I believed I could still make some changes at my will,” he said.

Determined to start anew, he went back again to a motel as a manager to save money.

He was then already accustomed to the ins and outs of the motel business -- changing the linen, working the front desk, valet parking -- but loneliness was hard to overcome as he had to work solo, Lee said.

So he set up an online forum where he would keep and share a diary with other motel workers.

Other motel housekeepers also started to share their stories at home and work, their life goals and their know-how.

By word of mouth, the online forum grew bigger with more members joining the online community. The number of community members later surpassed 10,000, and there were lots of activities taking place on the website, such as job seeking, hiring, and advertising.

Seeing great business potential, Lee jumped into the motel consulting business in 2005, offering information and advice to those wanting to start motels and providing relevant data. Lee later received an offer to acquire the third-largest online community for sharing motel information and started a microblogging website as well.

Copycat websites sprouted up, but Lee upgraded his site, hiring new web designers and developers, and it eventually became the nation‘s top online motel booking business.