Software:Hostaway

Short description: Hostaway Vacation Rental Software

Hostaway is a property management software and channel manager, specializing in short-term and vacation rentals. It is used by property managers to efficiently manage rental properties listed across various online booking platforms, such as Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Expedia, and Google Travel.

Hostaway is based in Toronto, with office based in Helsinki and Barcelona.

History

Hostaway was founded in 2015 by Marcus Rader, Saber Kordestanchi, and Mikko Nurminen.

Despite no prior experience in hospitality, the three co-founders decided on the idea of Hostaway after seeing the market looked fairly open. Apart from Airbnb, numerous platforms existed for listing properties; however, there was no dominant software solution that could effectively manage listings across all these platforms.

All co-founders had previous experience working at start-ups that had achieved success by traditional measures, like raising money and exiting, but they witnessed a lot of dissatisfaction amongst employees and little in the way of financial returns.

Before starting to build Hostaway, they each spent time running a couple of vacation rentals to understand challenges and opportunities from their would-be customers’ point of view.

Until recently, Hostaway had taken on minimal investment, equalling $3.2 million. While the founders did attempt to raise funding in the past, they weren’t able to convince investors of its potential.

At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the company was negatively impacted by the significant drop in travel spending, reducing their revenue by 60% and leading to laying off a third of its workforce.

After persisting through the beginning of the pandemic however, the impacts of COVID-19 became a catalyst for the business to really take-off. Trends like working from home, the rising price of real estate, and digital nomads all contributed to strong growth in the vacation rental market.

Hostaway increased its revenues by more than 10 times since 2021.

On May 31, 2023, the company announced they’d raised $175 million from private equity firm, PSG.

Products and Services

Hostaway's property management platform provides a wide range of features and tools to streamline and automate various aspects of short-term rental management. This includes: centralized calendar management, automated messaging and guest communication, pricing optimization, channel management, reservation and booking management, as well as reporting and analytics.

Hostaway is elite or preferred partners with all popular online booking platforms such as Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, Expedia, Trip Advisor, Google Travel, and more, allowing users to manage their listings across multiple channels from a single platform.

Additionally, the product has integrations with over 100 other partner apps that help short term rental managers and hosts automate, scale, and grow their businesses.

Users can use Zapier to access 3,000+ additional connections or build their own with Hostaway's open API

Market Presence

Hostaway customers manage more than 100,000 properties in more than 100 countries

Awards and Recognition

Hostaway has been widely recognized for its industry-leading solutions and contributions to the short-term rental market, including being the category leader across all major third-party review sites, like:

• 2023 Capterra Top Performer
• Trustpilot “Excellent” rating
• 2023 GetApp Category Leader
• 2023 Sourceforge Category Leader
• 2022 G2 Best Support Award
• 2023 G2 Category Leader
• 2023 Software Advice Frontrunner
• 2023 Crozdesk Happiest Users award
• 2023 Shortzys “Best Property Manager Software” nominee
• 2023 Shortzys “Best Channel Manager” nominee