MyVR Raises $6 Million for Rental Property Software: Travel Startup Funding This Week

Each week we round up travel startups that have recently received or announced funding.

Three side notes in travel-related funding, first:

>>Lyft, the ride-hailing app competitor to Uber, said it has raised a $1.5 billion round led by Alphabet’s CapitalG investment unit.

>>Lilium, a flying taxi startup, raised $90 million in a Series B funding. Read Skift’s takedown piece on the flying taxi hype.

>>Boom Technology, which intends to create a supersonic jet for passenger travel, received a $10 million investment from Japan Airlines. See this story from earlier this week.

Now, for our focus on startups for online travel. The total raised this week was more than $16 million.

>>MyVR, a vacation rental property management tech company, has raised $6.1 million, led by True Ventures. The total investment to date is $7.5 million.

The San Francisco startup, which is a graduate of the YCombinator incubator, offers a channel manager tool to let homeowners manage bookings of up to about 20 rental properties on sites like Airbnb, Booking.com, HomeAway, and TripAdvisor.

The company stands out from some other providers by attempting to be a platform for integrating a variety of software services to help property managers manage operations.

There’s been a flurry of activity in the vacation rental tech space. See the TravelNest funding, below, and see this week’s story on Rented’s New $125 Million Arm Aims to Give Steady Income to Vacation Home Owners

>>Dosh is an app that lets consumers buy hotel rooms, retail goods, or meals in restaurants on a company or personal card and get cash back. It filed a regulatory document Thursday saying it had topped up its seed funding round with an additional $4.9 million.

The latest money closes the seed round, led by Goodwater Capital, and brings its funding to $18.4 million. Skift reported on its seed funding round this summer.

Dosh said travel is its a little over half of its business and business travelers are a primary target market, though day-of in-store purchase transactions of retail goods and food account for the other half of the business.

It said “100,000 vendors” participate and that more than half of those are hotels, most of which belong to chains.

>>TravelNest, a vacation rental tech advertising startup, raised $4 million, or £3 million.

Pentech, Mangrove Capital Partners, and Frontline Ventures participated in the seed round for the advertising optimization company with 20 employees based in Edinburgh.

TravelNest helps to sets rates, list, and manage rentals on sites like Airbnb, Booking.com, HomeAway, and TripAdvisor.

>>Arrivedo, a tool for helping guests get tips from hotels on local experiences, raised a Series Seed of $1 million from hoteliers and technology angels in Peru.

Arrivedo makes software that lets hotels create and market a neighborhood guide, helping hoteliers compete with Airbnb in drawing guests. Launched a year ago, it says that more than 500 hotels in 80 cities have signed up, including Kimpton Hotel Allegro in Chicago and Park Villa Boutique Hostels in London.

The Lima-based company won the people’s choice award at this year’s hospitality technology conference HITEC.

Its software pulls together articles from writers it certifies along with local information such as maps, routes, restaurant information.

Check out our previous startup funding roundups, here.