Airbnb Denies Buying Scottish Firm Letting Cloud

Airbnb has denied all reports of acquiring Scottish property portal Letting Cloud. 

Several news outlets on Tuesday reported that Airbnb acquired Letting Cloud for its technology that verifies short-term rental licenses and permits held by landlords. 

News publications including The Times London, Tech Funding News, The Herald Scotland published reports attributing it to a press release from Letting Cloud. Some of these have been corrected since.

Airbnb has denied this claim. “We have no relationship with this company, we have had no discussions with this company and we have not acquired nor do we intend to acquire this company,” an Airbnb spokesperson told Skift. 

Founded by entrepreneur Grant MacCusker in 2019, Letting Cloud claims to have more than 5,000 agents marketing around 500,000 properties in the holiday, short- and long-term rental sectors throughout the UK per year. 

All public information about Letting Cloud leaves a lot to be desired.

According to public filings submitted to the UK Companies House, Letting Cloud has zero employees, negative equity and MacCusker is the sole registered proprietor for several entities registered between 2021 and 2023 – the latest being a company named after him last month with no official filings or employees listed.