Home > > With $2M from HomeAway, Flat4Day will expand in short-term rentals

With $2M from HomeAway, Flat4Day will expand in short-term rentals

06/01/2015| 2:19:55 PM| 中文

HomeAway, the vacation rental platform giant, has made a $2 million investment in Flat4Day, also known as Hemen Kiralik, the country’s largest holiday home rental website.

Through an earlier deal, most of Flat4Day’s 30,000 listings appear on HomeAway’s sites, providing coverage in Turkey and Southern Europe. (For details, see Tnooz’s profile of Hemen Kiralik/Flat4 Day from earlier this year.)

This Series C round of venture finance totaled $2.5 million. Of that, HomeAway contributed $2 million, giving it minority ownership in the company, which is operated by Remar Bilgi Teknolojileri ve Pazarlama.

Also participating in the round were the venture capital funds that have previously invested in the startup: 212 and Aslanoba Capital. Flat4Day/Hemen Kiralik has raised more than $6 million in venture capital, to date.

Rationale for expansion

In an email interview, co-founder and managing director Rina Onur said:

“Our HemenKiralik brand is very very strong in the Turkish market both with Turkish hosts and travelers.

We’re by far the largest player in terms of the sheer size of the inventory we have here and we try very hard to provide direct customer support service to our local travelers with our operational team based in Istanbul.

What we’ve been focused on recently is to make sure this inventory from our greater region of Turkey, Eastern and Southern Europe, now meets with a global audience under the Flat4Day brand and partnership of Homeaway family.

This investment has obviously brought the two companies closer as we share a similar vision for the greater Middle East and Eastern European region.

Not only is Turkey one of the top-5-most-visited countries in Europe, it is also a top destination for Arabic and Russian speaking travelers.

One of the main focus areas for us will be to continue to develop (a) our urban inventory and
(b) our coastal vacation homes & villas in Turkey, MENA, Southern and Eastern Europe to cater to now a global family of travelers, thanks to Homeaway.

So, one major area is to keep strengthening the supply base.

What we’ll try to do better at the back of this funding is to not only continue to build our platform, but invest heavily into BI and Data Monitoring to analyze traveler behavior patterns while on the site, demographics and demand criteria.

This funding will also enable us to tap into the potential of the greater Middle East and North Africa regions, with a booming demand ranging from touristic travel to family visits within the region to medical tourism.

The social demographics, the number of large families traveling, and the importance given to privacy due to conservative cultural differences, make the vacation rental business a preferred option compared to hotels in our region.

We’re excited as we’re based right in the middle of it and to keep leading the industry, now with the backing of Homeaway is a fantastic opportunity.”

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TAGS: HomeAway | Flat4Day | vacation rental | financing
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