US: San Francisco-based vacation rental startup Tripping.com has raised $35 million in a Series C funding round.
In the last year, the company doubled its property listings to 10 million – five times that of Airbnb – making it the world’s largest search engine for vacation homes and short-term rentals.
The company is on track to generate more than $500 million in gross bookings this year, a 600 per cent increase over 2015.
“Vacation rentals are one of the largest and fastest-growing markets on the planet. By 2025 it’s estimated to be about $285 billion in terms of market size just for vacation rentals,” said Tripping.com co-founder and CEO Jen O’Neal. “We’re very lucky to be playing in this massive and very hot market right now.”
Tripping.com was founded in 2011 to aggregate the inventory of sites such as Airbnb and HomeAway into one place. It takes 50 per cent of their partners’ bookings fees, often getting as much as 10 per cent of the entire booking.
In the company’s five-year history, it has raised $50 million. After it raised $16 million in a Series B early last year, the company was valued at $100 million. With the new investors, the company is not releasing its new valuation.
The Series C round was raised from an international suite of investors led by Princeville Global, a Hong Kong- and Silicon Valley-based an investment company focused on backing rapidly-growing tech companies around the world. Princeville’s main partners have been involved in the IPO’s for Kayak, HomeAway, Alibaba and more.
Click here to see a video interview with Jen O’Neal, filmed at the 2016 Serviced Apartment Summit Americas.
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