VRMA Administrator
Startups in the vacation rental market continue to draw interest from investors. Whimstay, for example, recently announced $10 million in fresh funding, while Sextant Stays added $14 million and Kindred and Holiday Swap took in $15 million. During an "Accessing the Money” session at the recent Short Stay Summit in London, representatives from Guesty and Holidu provided their view on the attractiveness of the market for investors. Johannes Sieber, co-founder and CEO of Holidu, which has raised €200 million including €100 million in October, said, “It’s a large market, a growing market with growing demand and on top of that it’s an offline-to-online change, which drives even more growth. It’s still super fragmented and in many areas non-digital, and that’s a great place to build something.” Amiad Soto, co-founder and CEO of property management platform Guesty, which has raised $280 million, including $170 million announced in August, said that the market is still in its infancy. “Our market share is still in single-digit percentages, and that’s just in vacation rental. We can grow a lot. As the market grows and matures, we see a lot of our customers go into adjacent markets: glamping, student housing, residential and a lot of other ones, taking full buildings and converting them into boutique hotels. There, our market penetration is even lower, so we have a lot of room to grow and to disrupt these other markets.”
PhocusWire (05/05/23) Linda Fox
