Former Booking.com CEO invests in Holidu as vacation rental company turns profitable
September 2020
Holidu, one of the fastest-growing travel tech companies worldwide, today announced that former Booking.com CEO Kees Koolen has invested more than €4 million into the company from his personal fund as part of a €5 million extension to the €40 million Series C round of the previous year.
The funding follows a period of accelerated growth for Holidu in spite of the general turbulence in the travel market due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The company turned profitable in May and since then generated seven-digit positive EBIT figures.
In July alone, more than 27 million users visited the Holidu website, resulting in a 2.6x growth in year-on-year bookings and more than €130 million of newly generated bookings that month.
Kees Koolen
Founded by brothers Johannes and Michael Siebers in 2014, Holidu’s mission is to finally make the search and booking of vacation rentals easy via its two synergistic business models in the space. On the one side, Holidu operates a search engine for vacation rentals. This enables travelers to find and book their ideal accommodation for the lowest price by giving them access to all of the rentals listed by Holidu’s 1,000+ partners worldwide. On the other side, the company’s subsidiary Bookiply provides a software and service offering to vacation rental owners. This enables owners to increase their bookings with less work by distributing properties to the largest travel websites, synchronizing calendars, and creating multilingual descriptions and professional photos.
Michael und Johannes Siebers
The COVID-19 pandemic shifted travel behavior substantially. It has increased the focus on domestic travel, led to more last-minute bookings and more premium accommodation choices according to Holidu’s internal data comparing July 2020 with the same month of the previous year:
- The share of domestic bookings increased from 50% in July last year to 68% in July this year.
- Holidu’s travelers had booked their July holiday on average 38 days in advance this year compared to 59 days in advance last year.
- The average price per night in July 2020 was €154 in 2020, 14% higher than in the previous year.
“People had been locked in their apartments due to COVID-19 for a long time and we saw that once it was allowed again, people just wanted to travel. Many of them looked for safer nearby travel options, for which vacation rentals are ideal. We have focused on this segment of the travel market since our foundation and it makes us beyond happy that we have been able to help millions of travelers to have a great summer vacation this year.” said Johannes Siebers, Co-founder and CEO at Holidu. “At one point, we almost got overwhelmed by the large demand. Fortunately, we were able to react quickly thanks to the strong work of our team and the internal technology tools.”
Holidu, your search engine for vacation rentals
“The COVID-19 pandemic is reshuffling the cards in the travel industry and Holidu is clearly one of the winners of the accelerated trend towards alternative accommodation”, said Kees Koolen. “Over the five years I’ve been working with Holidu, my confidence in the team has only grown. On top of that, the entire company is centered around data and technology in a way that is unmatched in the industry.”
Michael Siebers, Co-founder and CTO at Holidu adds: “We’re thrilled to have Kees’s investment and his continued advice and support as board member. The funding will help us to seize the many opportunities for growth ahead and we want to be prepared for any future scenario.”
Headquartered in Munich, Holidu now has a team of more than 200 people and closed its €40 million Series C round led by Prime Ventures in 2019. Kees Koolen has been an active board member in Holidu since 2016, both during his time as partner at EQT Ventures and later in his role as advisor to EQT Ventures.
About Holidu
Holidu’s mission is to finally make the search and booking of vacation rentals easy. Its search engine for vacation rentals allows travelers to book the ideal accommodation for the lowest price. The company also helps holiday rental owners multiply their bookings with less work through its software and service solution under the Bookiply brand. The brothers Johannes and Michael Siebers founded Holidu in 2014. The high-growth startup is headquartered in Munich and has local offices in the most attractive travel destinations in Europe. For more information, see www.holidu.com and www.bookiply.com.
About Kees Koolen
Kees Koolen is a Dutch businessman and investor. He was the COO, CEO and chairman of Booking.com from 2002-2014. He was an early Uber investor and helped Uber roll out internationally. Moreover, he was a founding partner at EQT ventures and now he is active in driving the transition towards clean energy with his clean energy conglomerate Koolen Industries.