Klook, the Hong Kong travel and experiences platform, has completed a US$210 million funding round combining equity and bank facilities. The equity was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with BPEA EQT, Atinum Investment, Golden Vision Capital and Southeast Asian corporate investors including Krungsri Finnovate, Kasikornbank and SMIC SG Holdings; the company says it also arranged facilities with Citi, J.P. Morgan and HSBC.

Klook says the round takes its total raised to more than US$900 million over eight rounds, and that 2023 was its first profitable year, with gross booking value running at an annualised US$3 billion — three times the level of 2019. It says more than 80 per cent of bookings are made on mobile, and that repeat customers provided more than half of all bookings.

What gross booking value counts

Gross booking value is the value of what customers spend, not what Klook keeps, and it measures scale rather than margin. The company attributes its position to pandemic-era spending on bringing merchants online and expanding its supply network, which is a more durable claim than the growth figure, because it describes something built rather than something that merely bounced back.

Klook also says it will put money into generative artificial intelligence through a collaboration with Google Cloud, covering translation, content and customer service. That is where platform travel is heading, and it is worth asking which side benefits: a chatbot that answers a traveller's question faster is useful, and it does little for the operator of a boat trip or a cooking class, who does not get to set the terms of the platform that sells them.

Klook's figures are its own. A profitable platform in a region where travel recovered unevenly is a notable thing; whether that profit is shared with the small operators who make up its inventory is a separate question, and one the announcement does not raise.