INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Holidu, the Munich-headquartered holiday rentals search engine that is now active in 21 country markets, has raised €40 million in Series
C funding.The round was led by Prime Ventures, with participation from coparion and MairDuMont Ventures
Existing investors, including EQT Ventures, Venture Stars, Senovo and business angel Chris Hitchen, also followed on.Founded in 2014 by
siblings Johannes and Michael Siebers after they say they had a frustrating experience trying to book a vacation rental for a surfing trip
in Portugal, Holidu’s search engine lets you easily search for and book holiday accommodations.Claiming to use proprietary image
recognition technology, Holidu compares the prices of more than 15 million rental properties across 600 different websites, including
Airbnb, Booking.com and HomeAway
This enables users to save “up to 55%” on their booking by automatically spotting price differences for the same property across various
listings.“Many of the sites offer the same rentals but at different prices,” Holidu co-founder and CEO Johannes Siebers told TechCrunch
“Also, there is a large rate of rejected bookings as the different sites don’t synchronize calendars with each other and properties get
For consumers it is impossible to gain a transparent overview.”To help solve this, Holidu has also developed a service for holiday
Dubbed “Bookiply,” it offers a single interface to list properties on the largest travel websites, including synchronizing calendars,
creating multilingual descriptions and sourcing professional photography
In addition, Bookiply’s team handles traveler communication.Holidu says that Bookiply already manages 5,000 properties and claims it is
the market leader in several European leisure destinations
“The focus is on property owners who are not yet online or whose digital presence can be optimised,” says the company.Meanwhile, to
boost growth, last year Holidu acquired its Spanish competitor Hundredrooms
The startup now claims 10 million visitors per month and says it will use the Series C funding for product development (both the Holidu
website and the Bookiply software)
It also will grow its Holidu partners and sign up more property owners to Bookiply
To achieve this, the company says it plans to open multiple regional offices.
