Italianway secures €2.5m investment to grow franchise network
Italy: Milan-based short-term rental property management company Italianway has announced that it has raised a total investment of €2.5 million in a stock capital increase involving current and new investors.
The company, which was founded by Davide Scarantino and is led by CEO Marco Celani, aims to use the funding to further strengthen its network that already boasts more than 150 entrepreneurs as partners and franchisees, both on the supply and demand side.
Managing more than 3000 properties in 340+ destinations throughout Italy, Italianway closed 2021 with a turnover of around €21 million – a 140 per cent increase on 2020 – and a budget of €44 million turnover for 2022.
At the beginning of 2020, The Financial Times placed Italianway among the top 1000 companies across the EU that have grown the most in the last three years.
In 2020 and 2021, vacation rental channel management solution Rentals United included Italianway among the ‘World’s Top 50 Vacation Rental Property Management Companies’, a list that selected 50 leading vacation rental companies for the use of “cutting-edge technologies and sophisticated growth strategies”.
After its founding in 2014, the proptech went on to raise €4 million in 2018, at which time CEO Marco Celani said: “We will use the funds deriving from the current stock capital increase to finance the development of our network in terms of relationships, both on the demand side with the increase in the distribution channels we offer and the features that can maximise the occupancy rate, and on the supply side, increasing the number of franchisees and partners who rely on our talent team for high value-added services related to online promotion.”
Property managers who join the Italianway franchise network enter a system that enables them to scale rapidly, both in terms of the number of accommodations and occupancy rate, and reduce costs at the same time.
Italianway president Davide Scarantino said: “Our history can be divided into three phases: the first one, from birth to 2018, has served us to strategically focus on the needs of a property management company that wants to grow in a scalable way; the second one, from 2018 to today, during which we focused on the development of a proprietary software platform to automate processes and offer our partners and franchisees a single interlocutor that helps them grow and measure themselves with market changes.
“And finally the third phase, the one that starts today: with the new capital increase we aim to strengthen our network by increasing the number of online accommodations and increasingly perfecting our multi-channel distribution strategy able to offer showcases and positioning increasingly focused on the needs of each property,” he added.
Celani was also shortlisted for the 2021 ‘Courage in Adversity’ award category at the 2021 Shortyz Awards.
