Hotel rooms can be booked with a single click, but banquet halls are still traded over the phone and via email. Kim Han-gyeol, CEO of Lubook, who worked as an online marketing manager at a Jeju hotel, faced this gap every day.
While rooms were reserved, banquet halls were contracts. This involved understanding the client's event purpose, scale, and budget, arranging customized quotes, and then reaching a final agreement. Since transactions weren't completed with a single click, a straightforward OTA model couldn't be replicated. The problem was the lack of tools to support this contracting process. Salespeople were mired in repetitive tasks: answering calls, manually organizing details, creating quotes in Excel, sending them via email, and then following up with phone calls. CEO Kim founded Lubook in 2019 with the goal of developing technology that would allow salespeople to focus on communicating with clients and closing deals.
Even today, most banquet hall sales at domestic hotels are conducted via phone, email, and fax. The digital conversion rate remains in the single digits. Currently, around 70 hotels, mainly in Seoul, including those affiliated with the top five global chains—Marriott, Hilton, Accor, IHG, and Hyatt—have implemented Lubuk EMS, capturing leads from over 1,400 venues.
“The real competition isn’t other platforms, it’s the inertia of ‘just call me.’”
CEO Kim's strategy isn't to eliminate the phone, but to embrace it. When a customer calls, Lubook EMS's AI call assistant automatically summarizes the call and generates and sends a quote within minutes of the call ending. This seamless communication pipeline continues with the customer. Salespeople can maintain the familiar phone experience while the system handles subsequent repetitive tasks.
Lubook's revenue structure is clear. Unlike OTAs, which take commissions from middlemen, it's a SaaS that strengthens hotels' direct sales. EMS SaaS subscription fees account for 95 percent of revenue.
"MICE space transactions are not reservations, they're contracts. The ones who close those deals aren't platforms or technology, but hotel salespeople who meet customers directly on site."
With leads automatically captured through Rubook EMS, AI-powered inquiries sorted, and quotes quickly sent, sales representatives can focus on their core tasks of communicating with customers and closing deals. Hotels strengthen their sales force without incurring commissions, while Rubook secures predictable, recurring revenue.
When persuading hotels, the core message was clear: Lubook isn't about stealing customers, but rather a tool that helps hotels attract them directly. Initially, we lowered the barrier to entry by producing and providing 360-degree VR content, starting with hotels in the Jeju area to establish our initial references.
The hotel's main resistance was price transparency. They feared that exposing banquet hall unit prices online would weaken their negotiating power. However, they were persuaded by data showing that increased lead inflow actually resulted in a thicker sales pipeline, leading to increased contracts and revenue.
"The decisive factor was that five-star hotels in the City Hall/Gwanghwamun area and Gangnam, which already had significant sales and strong brand power even without EMS, responded to the introduction by saying, 'This tool has made our work easier.' Hotels that didn't seem to need it first experienced the benefits, and from then on, references became references."
Looking at the hotel room market, a seamless online ecosystem has already been established, connecting PMS, CMS, and OTA. In contrast, the MICE and B2B markets lacked all three of these pillars.
“I thought that even if we competed solely on channels or systems, we wouldn't be able to achieve digital transformation in this market.”
EMS is a system that manages the hotel's entire sales process, while Sales Engine is a direct lead capture tool provided to each hotel. Venue Network is a network of these sales engines, and Group Bookings is a network of sales engines for group rooms. The key is that leads, regardless of where they come from, are ultimately managed through a single EMS pipeline. Sales representatives can view the entire process, from lead inflow to contract closing, at a glance by simply opening Rubook. Just as PMS, CMS, and OTA form a single ecosystem in the room market, Rubook is building that ecosystem from the ground up in the MICE market.
The expansion of Group Bookings follows a similar pattern. Many corporate clients contracting banquet halls also wanted to handle group room bookings. Existing OTAs are optimized for individual bookings, leaving a gap in the market, unable to properly handle group bookings of 10 rooms or more. While OTAs incur significant commissions, Loobook allows hotels to directly coordinate and negotiate contracts with clients.
"Lubook's AI isn't a technology that replaces salespeople. Ultimately, it's the people who close deals who meet with customers. The AI's role is to relieve those salespeople of the remaining chores so they can focus on closing the deal."
Lubook EMS' AI call assistant automatically records, analyzes, and summarizes call details, generating and sending quotes within minutes of the call. This significantly simplifies the manual process from answering the phone to organizing the call, drafting the quote, and sending it via email. Customers receive quotes quickly after making an inquiry, increasing customer satisfaction. Sales representatives are freed from repetitive administrative tasks and can focus on customer meetings and contract negotiations.
In 2025, the company secured Series A funding from Hyundai Investment Partners and Strong Ventures. The funds will be used to advance EMS technology, expand its sales force, and prepare for global expansion.
A proof-of-concept (POC) for DoubleTree by Hilton Osaka Castle and Lubuk EMS is underway in Japan, starting in September 2025. Japan boasts a large MICE market, yet its digital transformation has been slower than in Korea. With five major global chains already using Lubuk EMS in Korea, it's only natural for the chains to expand their operations to overseas properties.
Kim has a different perspective on concerns that technology will eliminate jobs.
"Before the advent of OTAs, there wasn't even a position called OTA manager in hotels. Technology created a new channel, and a new role emerged to manage that channel."
As EMS and sales engines become more widespread, a new role will emerge in hotels: online sales representatives. As inquiries, previously primarily phone-based, shift to online channels, hotels will be able to reach more potential customers, creating a need for specialized personnel to manage this pipeline and convert it into contracts.
“Technology isn't replacing people; it's opening up opportunities for people to generate greater sales.”
The domestic hotel banquet hall market alone is worth 1.6 trillion won. The digital transformation of this market is only just beginning. The tenacity of an entrepreneur, who discovered a gap in Jeju hotels and started his own business to address it, is drawing attention to how he will transform the hotel sales market, which has traditionally relied on phone calls and Excel spreadsheets.
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