France: Paris-based startup Homerez has raised €6 million to expand the usage of its app for vacation home rental owners around Europe and worldwide.
The business, which launched in 2014, received the funding from Seventure Partners, in addition to existing investors Entrepreneur Venture and XAnge, and private investors Nicolas Brumelot, Frédéric Halley, David Roche and Pablo Szefner.
It means the startup has to this point raised a total amount of €10 million since launching four years ago.
The app created by Homerez aims to simplify the booking process of renting vacation homes for property owners and allows users to list their accommodation on over 20 OTAs and vacation rental websites, including HomeAway and Booking.com.
Furthermore, the app works by developing develops ads in five languages before broadcasting them on rental platforms like Airbnb or review sites like TripAdvisor. It also offers booking management and contract signing services, manages customer calls and provides responses to queries by email.
Homerez is already proving a popular alternative for rental homeowners in France as 6,000 users have now registered with the startup. Its founders are now targeting managing over 50,000 properties within a timeframe of five years in the hope that it will become a trendsetter for incoming, innovative vacation rental platforms in the market.
Homerez’s co-founder Loïc Dupont emphasised the app’s market potential and said homeowners have become more willing to rent out their vacation homes, as opposed to just five years ago. Since then, the trend has resulted in an increase in the availability of homes by 10 times.
The startup is looking forward to January 2019, when it will launch a new product aimed at homeowners. Although no details have yet been disclosed on what the product will entail, Dupont believes Homerez will become a household name in the vacation rental industry in the coming years.
