Skift Take
In the California gold rush, businesses once sold pickaxes to prospectors. In today's vacation rental gold rush, they're selling management services to the property owners. The safest bets are always adjacent services.
Each week we round up travel startups that have recently received or announced funding. This week was a quiet week, with $15 million raised by one company.
>>Hostmaker, an Airbnb management service based in London, has raised $15 million in a Series B funding round.
Sansiri, a Thai real estate developer, and Gaw Capital, a Hong Kong-based real estate investor, led the round.
The latest round brings the startup’s total funding to $25 million since it was founded in 2014 by Nakul Sharma. It has 149 employees.
Unlike Vacasa and TurnkeyVR, and other vacation rental startups that have been lavishly funded recently, Hostmaker focuses on short-term rentals, similar to GuestReady, which recently received $3 million.
Hostmaker provides on-property services, such as housekeeping and interior design, and also manages listings on platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com. Regarding taking care of listings, Hostmaker performs tasks such as taking property photos and setting rates.
Hostmaker calls itself the largest venture capital-backed homestay hospitality management team in Europe. It says it has so far carried out “more than 150,000 services” at about 1,000 properties in Europe’s largest cities since 2014.
Check out our previous startup funding roundups, here.
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Tags: funding, startups, vcroundup
Photo credit: This is the kitchen and living room area of a property managed by Hostmaker, a short-term rental management service based in London that has raised $25 million to date. Hostmaker