Articles tagged “wimdu”

One ripple effect of startups like Airbnb raising enormous sums of funding is that it has become harder for smaller rivals to clone their models elsewhere in the world. While clones get a bad name, they do provide benefits to consumers in added competition.

Over the last 18 months Wyndham has been supplementing its vacation rental offering with acquisitions in what we would call the alternative accommodation market. The investments in Veeve and Wimdu are just the latest indications of how seriously it is taking this segment.

Despite the large amount of funding Wimdu received in 2011, it was never able to scale its operation on a global basis like Airbnb. The variety of laws restricting the ability of Europeans to list their homes on a roomsharing platform likely hastened its demise.

The global travel industry is going through a lot of disruption, and the biggest sectors include the sharing economy and ground transportation, as well as one large potential winner in the hotel booking sector.