2018 is already shaping up to be an incredible year – and we’re only just over half-way through! Not only have we grown our team to 50 people and released our two-way direct API integrations with Airbnb and Booking.com, we’ve also launched many more useful new features for our users.
Lodgify raises $5M to decentralize the vacation rental industry
Today, we’re excited to share our biggest internal news to date – we’ve just raised $5 million in Series A funding to continue building direct channel technology for the vacation rental industry.
This new capital injection marks an important endorsement of Lodgify’s strategy, and we’re looking forward to the opportunities it will bring. Above all, it means we’ll be able to do things like scale our team, launch our mobile app and continue developing API connections with the most significant channels.
Since our last funding round in 2016, we have tripled both our customer base and our team, as well as hit the milestone of quadrupling the number of bookings per property. We’re excited to help fuel our users’ growth even further, and to see what the next chapter of the Lodgify story holds.
So far, our software has helped owners with properties in over 116 countries increase their direct bookings – you can read some of their success stories on our blog.
Developing vacation rental software for users of all abilities
We are committed to building a software which makes owners’ lives (and their jobs) easier. We’ve already fully automated the booking workflow: from booking management, to guest communication, payment scheduling and refunding in the case of cancellations. These steps run on autopilot – empowering our hosts to be instantly bookable and eliminating time-consuming tasks.
For those of you who have not yet taken the plunge to build your own online channel, we have one piece of advice for you: software is not as scary as you may think. In the words of Matt Landau, “sometimes we need to name the challenge in order to overcome it.”
While a solution like Lodgify is easy to set up even for the most beginner users, it’s also powerful enough to fully customize – for those advanced users with existing coding knowledge. Our templates are already optimized for vacation rental businesses, and allow you to start accepting online bookings as soon as you hit publish.
What’s next for Lodgify?
Our vision of the vacation rental is a decentralized one, whereby owners and property managers play by their own rules. We will continue to contribute to this with our direct channel technology which empowers vacation rental operators to create their own bookable website and grow their direct bookings – without commissions.
Our Series A funding will drive our team growth to continue improving the product that you all know and love. This has been a monumental year for Lodgify and we’d like to thank you all for your continued support to help us get this far.
