The vacation rental search engine has announced the closure of one of €40 million in a Series C. The round has been led by Prime Ventures, with the participation of coparion and MairDuMont Ventures. All existing investors, including EQT Ventures, Venture Stars, Senovo and Chris Hitchen, have also participated in the round, which occurs a few months after having acquired the Spanish company Hundredrooms.
What is Holidu?
Holidu was founded in 2014 by Johannes and Michael Siebers after a frustrating experience booking a vacation rental on a surf trip in Portugal. The brothers spent hours browsing dozens of websites to find the right accommodation. They quickly realized that some of the rentals were offered on various websites at different prices. Also, it was very difficult to finalize a reservation as the calendars displayed on the websites were often not up to date. That’s why Johannes and Michael set out to solve these problems with a mission to make finding and booking a vacation rental easy.
Since then, Holidu has become one of the fastest growing travel companies in the world. Your browser is active on 21 markets and serves more than 10 million visitors per month. With its patented image recognition technology, Holidu compares the prices of more than 15 million rentals between over 600 different websites, including Airbnb, Booking.com and Homeaway. This allows users to save up to 55% on their reservation. In addition, at the beginning of this year, Holidu bet on its organic growth acquiring and integrating the strong brand and website presence of its Spanish competitor .
As explained to us
«Our typical customers are families, groups and couples. They like the privacy and the personality that vacation rentals offer compared to hotels. They also spend a lot attention to price and keep in mind the budget for vacations. That is why our ambition is always to offer the best price for each house Y thus provide savings to our customers.
In this sense we have facilitated with our new mobile applicationsto share and vote on vacation rentals in groups, even without creating an account…”.
At that time, Siebers already knew what the great competitive advantage of his company was:
“The vacation rental industry is a huge marketwith over $100 billion in reserves a year. Despite the size, the market still shows many inefficiencies. For example, the price of the same house can vary up to 50% from one website to another.
In addition, it is very difficult and not very transparent for travelers to search the hundreds of vacation rental websites to find the best offer. This is where Holidu helps and creates value. As a metasearch engine, we offer users the largest selection at the best price. The key is that we build the best search technology based on image recognition and machine learning. This gives us a competitive advantage and adds real value to our customers.”
A new impulse to the evolution of Holidu
The new funding will be used to continue promoting product development, both for the search engine, Holidu, and for its new Bookiply software. In addition, the company will increase its inventory by increasing the number of partners/websites connected to Holidu and rapidly multiplying the number of owners who work with Bookiply. To make it, the company plans to open multiple local offices including in Spain, in Barcelona and Tenerife in addition to the existing one in Mallorca.
Johannes Siebers, CEO and co-founder of Holidu, said: “We are delighted to be working with such a strong group of investors, including Prime Ventures and EQT Ventures. The funding will accelerate our growth and help us create more value for our partners, travelers and vacation rental owners.”
“We believe in the power of technology and data; and that connecting the two can solve almost any problem. The vacation rental market is still ten years behind other digital markets, so the opportunity is huge»added Michael Siebers, CTO and co-founder of Holidu.
Holidu launches Bookiply
While market fragmentation makes it difficult for travelers to book vacation rentals, it also makes managing rentals very difficult for owners. these need register your properties on several web pages to maximize occupancy and they have to keep calendars constantly in sync with each other. This difficulty explains the lack of reserve capacity and the high cancellation rates in the market. True to its mission, Holidu has developed an independent solution for vacation rental owners under the brand .
Bookiply serves vacation rental owners by property distribution on major travel websites, automatically synchronizing calendars; in addition with the creation of multilingual property descriptions, as well as professional photos. One team handles communication with travelers and helps owners maximize revenue.
Bookiply already manages 5,000 properties and is the market leader in several European destinations. The focus is on owners who are not yet offering their properties online or whose digital presence can be optimized. Bookiply is part of the “premier connectivity partners” of booking.com.
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