Holidu receives €40M from investors in a Series C funding round

Based out of Munich, Holidu is an international comparison platform for vacation rentals, where users can browse, compare prices, and book rentals around the world from one place.

Founded in 2014, the startup announced today that it has raised a €40 million Series C funding round. The round was led by Prime Ventures, with participation from coparion and MairDuMont Ventures. All existing investors, including EQT Ventures, Venture Stars, Senovo and business angel Chris Hitchen, also participated in the round.

Holidu was founded by brothers Johannes and Michael Siebers following a frustrating experience while booking a holiday rental for a surfing trip to Portugal. The brothers spent hours browsing through dozens of websites to find the right accommodation and realized that some of the rentals were offered on multiple websites for different prices, and that calendars shown on websites were often not up-to-date.

Since then, Holidu has become one of the fastest growing travel companies worldwide. Its search engine is now active in 21 markets and serves more than 10 million visitors per month. With its 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, enabling users to save substantially on their bookings. Earlier this year, Holidu built on its organic growth by acquiring its Spanish competitor Hundredrooms.

While the fragmentation of the market makes booking holiday rentals difficult for travelers, it also makes the management of rentals difficult for rental owners. To maximize occupancy and synchronize calendars, Holidu has also created a solution for vacation rental owners under the brand Bookiply.

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