More financial validation of the apartment rental sector with news that Germany-based 9Flats has secured a round of funding led by US venture capital firm Redpoint Ventures.
Terms of the funding package were not disclosed but the round brings the total level of investment in the business to $10 million in the six months since the business launched.
The round also included investment from eVenture Capital Partners and BV Capital.
Fronted by former-Qype and Lastminute.com executive Stephan Uhrenhacker, 9Flats has offices in Berlin and Hamburg in Germany and Valencia in Spain. The company already has 100 employees.
9Flats says it will use the financing to add senior members of staff and attract more product from across its main market of Europe.
Similar to other rental services (AirBNB, OneFineStay, WhereToSleep, Geronimo et al), 9Flats is an online marketplace for those looking to rent out apartments. It currently lists over 8,000 properties in 40 countries.
Great piece Kevin …
Seems like the space is getting lots of interest – a good thing. I am done staying in pricey rubber-chicken style hotels.
I used iStopOver in the past for some travels. Worked just fine — you may want to take a look.
@peter – thx.
we’ve written about IStopOver here:
http://www.tnooz.com/2010/08/27/news/planeteye-and-istopover-agree-merger-grab-3m-in-funding/
and
http://www.tnooz.com/2011/03/28/news/istopover-enables-travelers-to-customize-stay-requests/
These listing sites only solve half the problem – aggregating content. Because they are just listing flats, they have no control over the inventory or the owners of the inventory, leaving the consumer at the mercy of inaccurate availability calendars and unresponsive owners.
I’ve tried to use a few of these sites recently as I too am looking to stay in more interesting places, but out of nine inquiries, I have had a total of TWO responses from owners of these flats (and both took a couple of days to get back to me). Both responses indicated a lack of availability even though the online availability calendar showed open dates. The other SEVEN queries went totally unacknowledged. When booking a hotel, at least I get an immediate reply when there’s no availability and am not left hanging forever.
So I’ve come to the conclusion that using these sites is a waste of my time. Let me know when they’ve got some control over the inventory itself; I’d still love to stay somewhere other than a characterless hotel.