OYO Hotels & Homes completes Danamica acquisition
Denmark: Oyo Hotels & Homes has announced it has completed the acquisition of Copenhagen-based data science company Danamica for an undisclosed amount.
The news follows a matter of weeks on from OYO’s announcement in August that it was planning to inject around €300 million into its vacation rentals business. That indicated a renewed drive by the SoftBank-backed hospitality venture to expand further into the European vacation rental market and rival Airbnb, which is also an investor for the company.
Danamica, founded in 2016, is a Danish startup that is building a platform specialising in automated dynamic pricing and business intelligence for vacation rental agencies, in order to provide reliable insights to the industry as opposed to hunches.
Though the terms of the agreement have not been disclosed to the public, it is understood that the purchase of Danamica will be leveraged across its full range of vacation rental brands, i.e. Oyo Homes, Belvilla and DanCenter.
In a statement, OYO Hotels & Homes’ chief strategy officer and global head of OYO’s vacation and urban homes segment, Maninder Gulati, said: “Data sciences across pricing, AI, and imaging sciences have been a cornerstone of Oyo’s proprietary revenue enhancement technology. It is also a huge missing piece in the way traditional vacation rentals industry is run.
“We are glad to have found Danamica, which has built expertise in these areas,” he added.
In May, the hospitality firm made a significant acquisition in the form of Amsterdam-based vacation rental company @Leisure from German media and technology group Axel Springer, for a reported sum of €415 million. The brand has since been renamed as OYO Vacation Homes and represents OYO’s most prominent international acquisition to date as it builds up its rental management service business in Europe.
Speaking at the time, OYO Vacation Homes chief executive Tobias Wann said: “To support our vision towards becoming the largest full-service vacation rental business, we will make significant investments to expand our footprint in the market.”
In addition to the incoming investment, OYO now has offices in Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, France, and other major European cities, where its teams will be able to contribute to the growth of the rental sector in Europe.
Gulati added: “Globally, vacation rentals represent a massive multi-billion euro opportunity, the largest of which is in Europe.”
OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal claims that Oyo Vacations is now the world’s third-largest vacation home brand, with a portfolio of more than 125,000 homes in over 800 cities in 80+ countries across Europe, Asia and North America.
For more information, visit the OYO Hotels & Homes website here and the Danamica website here.
