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HomeAway raises $250 Million in VC funding
By siliconindia
Texas: HomeAway, an online vacation rental marketplace, has raised $250 million in venture capital funding. The new round brings the four-year-old start-up's total venture funding to $405 million.
The Web site connects vacation homeowners in the U.S. and Western Europe with travelers who want to rent their homes.
In four years, the company has made 10 acquisitions, including two similar Web sites in Britain, one in Germany, one in France and two in the United States: VRBO and VacationRentals.com.
The site, which charges $300 a year for a homeowner to list a property, has 325,000 paid listings and visitors have used it to book between 225,000 and 300,000 vacations each month, according to the company. The average homeowner earns $20,000 a year in rental income through the site, said Brian Sharples, its chief executive and founder.
The travel industry has been hit hard by the recession, as people shy away from spending money on discretionary expenditures like vacations. Visits to travel Web sites are down 3 percent from a year ago, according to comScore Media Metrix.
However, the company claims that traffic to HomeAway was up 58 percent from last October and the average homeowner on the site has been getting more queries than a year ago. Sharples insists that people will be more likely to rent vacation homes, which are cheaper than hotels.
Currently, a handful of start-ups compete with HomeAway. However, Sharples said he plans to spend some of the $250 million he raised on more acquisitions. Big travel sites are also getting into the business. Orbitz has a vacation rental section, powered by Zonder, and TripAdvisor, owned by Expedia, has invested in FlipKey, a vacation home review site. HomeAway is based in Austin, Texas.
