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Airbnb, Booking.com and the like have made it easy to book spaces in practically any city in the world, at competitive prices. However, you’re not always delivered ‘the hotel-standard’.
Very early on in the game, GuestReady’s co-founders Alex, Chris and Patrick (all Airbnb hosts themselves) identified flaws in the system that were preventing hosts from facilitating high quality rental offerings. Experiences with a short-term property rental varied greatly depending on how effectively the logistics were managed. So, they set out to build a solution to master those logistics on the behalf of hosts, for the benefit of their guests, handling everything from cleaning, to linen services, to key-handover throughout. For a host, the benefits of using a property management platform to handle the admin for you turns profiting from your unused spaces from a hassle to a no-brainer. For guests, it transforms an ‘alright’ stay into an excellent one. That way, anyone who books a short or mid-term rental via GuestReady can be confident they’ll be provided the best possible experience.
It wasn’t long before they took their venture around the world. GuestReady is already operating in over 20 cities worldwide (and counting!) and they’re on a mission to become the world’s leading brand for guests and property owners when it comes to unique short- and mid-term rentals.
With thousands of properties all over the world, the first question that comes to mind is scalability. However as their rapid global expansion has proven, GuestReady successfully developed an efficient and cost-effective property management system very early on that allowed them to automate many of the previously manual services. This focus on robust tech infrastructure has allowed them to provide the bulk of local services remotely from centralized support offices. In fact, GuestReady is the only player in the market offering full-suite property management software including a pricing algorithm, payment automation and operational process coordination.
Where good ideas go, investors follow – and this has been evident in GuestReady’s strong growth trajectory over the years. In 2019, after expanding to Paris, Portugal, Kuala Lumpur and the UAE, they acquired one of their competitors BnbLord in France and Portugal and successfully raised €5.1 million in a Series A round. They wrapped a bow on that year with an international portfolio exceeding 2,500 properties, estimated to be worth over $1 billion USD.
Despite 2020 being one of the toughest years in history for the travel industry, GuestReady’s team continued to bring new tech innovations to market, including virtual wallets, allowing them to take the business to EBITDA positivity and surpass €50 million in cumulative booking value, with over 1.2 millions nights sold to guests around the world.
Since 2019, GuestReady have dedicated focus to developing alternate B2B revenue streams, including a white-labelled version of their property management system (PMS) sold to vacation rental management companies and traditional property managers. They’ve now begun to scale the licensing of their software, after a year long trial, meaning the solution now works for a large number of property managers with little involvement from their side.
GuestReady’s core business model is profitable*, but the proceeds of this round will be invested into the continued growth of the business, by broadening their footprint in existing markets, further investing in tech development, and building out their SaaS online property management offering.
Nearly 500 investors have backed GuestReady, and you can join them. Visit the pitch now.
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*Based on August 2020 figures in the company’s unaudited management accounts.
