Travel and tourism are very much back on the map for consumers and the business world. Now, to underscore that surge, one of the startups building software in the space has closed a big round of funding. Guesty, a platform that lets accommodation managers manage their business online, including on platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo, has raised $130 million.
Sources confirmed to TechCrunch that the Series F values Guesty at around $900 million post-money.
The company, based out of New York with roots in Israel, says its revenue has increased 5x in the last 3 years, and it expects to turn profitable this year. The company did not specify actual revenue figures.
KKR is leading this round, with Apax Funds, Inovia, BDT & MSD Partners and Sixth Street also participating.
To put the funding into some context: post-Covid, the global travel and tourism sector has been on a strong rebound, and is expected to generate record-high sales of $11.1 trillion in 2024, according to the World Tourism and Travel Council. That would be despite tourism in the U.S. and China still catching up to pre-pandemic levels.
For Guesty and its competitors, this upswing has played out in the form of a number of nine-figure funding rounds. Guesty last raised a Series E of $170 million that valued it at $690 million in August 2022. Guesty’s close competitor, Hostaway, raised $175 million last May, marking its first big funding round. Within a day of that news, GetYourGuide raised a monster $194 million at a $2 billion valuation.
Mews, which like Guesty builds SaaS but for hoteliers, raised $110 million at a $1.2 billion valuation in March. This trend is a strong reminder that investors are still willing to sign term sheets in the right circumstances.
“It’s definitely a tough market. In every round I’ve raised, I would always get 40 no’s for every yes,” Amiad Soto, Guesty’s CEO, told TechCrunch. Now, with Guesty “closing in on becoming profitable this year,” he joked that “I still got 40 no’s, but also a lot more yes’s.”
Soto, who co-founded Guesty with his brother Koby (who is no longer with the company), plans to deploy the funding across a few different areas.
First of all, the company wants to continue expanding its existing platform for current customers. That business today already covers “hundreds of thousands” of properties, and it will double down on the one-stop-shop concept that a lot of other B2B tech companies are pursuing today, Soto said. He declined several times to give me a more specific figure on the number of properties its platform covers.
The platform provides the basics of listing and booking management software, analytics, accounting tools, the ability to manage multiple properties, and CRM features. More recently, it added enhanced payment services and capital advances (built in-house, not white-labelled from third parties, Soto said), damage protection services (dipping into the area of insurance), website building tools, and price optimization services that all integrate with the dozens of interfaces where a property manager might list a room or home for travellers to book.
Second of all, the main focus to date for Guesty has been short-term lets — properties booked typically for less than a month — but the company now wants to expand into the medium-term space. This will open it up to more people who might be living temporarily in a location for a specific work assignment, for example.
Third of all, Soto said Guesty wants to consider more acquisitions. The market may not be looking favorable for all startups right now, but that is less a comment on the strength of startups (talent and innovations) as it is on the state of venture capital right now. There are a lot of very interesting companies out there that might be ready to entertain acquisition offers that provide less bullish valuations.
Stephen Shanley, partner and head of Europe Tech Growth at KKR; Lauriane Requena, a principal at KKR Tech Growth; and Dennis Kavelman, a partner at Inovia Capital, are all joining the board with this round. “Guesty is a best-in-class operator and one of the clear leaders in the property management sector,” Shanley said in a statement. “There has been a significant shift towards the short-term rental market, and this investment will support the company as it continues to meet that growing customer need.”
