Guesty, a startup that designed a property management software used by hosts who list through sites like Airbnb and Booking.com, just raised $50 million and purchased competitor Your Porter.
The Israel-based company has been on a steady track of growth and expansion lately — two years ago, it secured $35 million in Series C funding and, last month, acquired Y Combinator-backed property management platform MyVR.
The latest Series D funding round is led by Apax Digital Fund and also includes AMI Opportunities Fund as well as existing investors Viola Growth, Flashpoint, Vertex Ventures, Kingfisher Investment Advisors and La Maison Partners. On the same day, Guesty announced that it has acquired Your Porter, a smaller property management company specializing in family-run rentals.
“In the public markets, there are many players in hospitality property management,” Guesty co-founder and CEO Amiad Soto said in a statement. “The same thing goes with residential property management. In short-term rentals, there’s no public player — you can bet your money that we are eyeing that target.”
Guesty
Guesty’s product — a software solution for property managers and management companies that allows them to manage multiple short-term rental listings, communicate with tenants, process payments, push listings to booking sites and create branded websites — has recently been expanded to capture larger multi-unit listings and “aparthotels.”
Guesty, which graduated from the Silicon Valley-based seed acceleration Y Combinator in 2014 and has since expanded to over 70 countries, has now raised more than $110 million. The new funds will go, according to Soto, toward growing its team and investing in technology such as machine learning and artificial intelligence at a time when short-term rentals are poised for a post-pandemic rebound.
“Yes, the pandemic changed travel, but not necessarily in bad ways across the board,” Soto said to TechCrunch. “Definitely for major hotels, there are going to be big changes, but for vacation rentals and boutique-style hotels that offer a different experience, this has made them a lot more accessible and a lot more appealing. This is what our investors believe in.”