{"id":340504,"date":"2017-05-10T05:50:33","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T21:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1485696"},"modified":"2017-05-10T05:50:33","modified_gmt":"2017-05-09T21:50:33","slug":"guesty-raises-3m-to-be-a-salesforce-for-property-managers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/guesty-raises-3m-to-be-a-salesforce-for-property-managers\/","title":{"rendered":"Guesty raises $3M to be a Salesforce for property managers"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Growth and\u00a0consolidation<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0vacation marketplaces has driven\u00a0investment<\/a>\u00a0into\u00a0the short-term rentals market.<\/p>\n

Some analysts are even\u00a0projecting the short-term rentals market to hit\u00a0$169.7 billion by 2019<\/a> and\u00a0$193.9 billion by 2021<\/a>\u00a0due to changes in the travel industry, like the Chinese traveling boom, the \u201cmillennial traveler\u201d and the cost reduction of air travel.<\/p>\n

With all that money getting thrown around, startups<\/a> are<\/a> forming<\/a>\u00a0to supplement marketplaces like Airbnb.\u00a0Companies like Guesty<\/a>, which just raised $3 million, are building tech to help property managers optimize\u00a0their listings.<\/p>\n

Magma Venture Partners (an early Waze investor) led the Series A round, and was\u00a0joined by\u00a0Buran VC and AltaIR Capital.\u00a0The company is using\u00a0the money to continue\u00a0scaling and to bring in an executive layer of engineering, marketing, finance and customer success VPs.<\/p>\n

The Tel Aviv-based startup, which graduated from Y Combinator in 2014<\/a>, was co-founded by twin brothers Amiad and Koby Soto after they experienced the hassle of trying to operate\u00a0their own rentals on Airbnb and OTAs, and wishing\u00a0there was software to seamlessly cross-manage different bookings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

At launch, Guesty started as an on-the-ground management company, but it pivoted twice to become an online management company, and today it\u00a0focuses on people\u00a0with a portfolio of properties they want to list as short-term rentals.<\/p>\n

So what does Guesty actually do? The goal\u00a0is to automate mundane daily tasks of property managers like dispatching cleaning services and managing check-ins. The product, an end-to-end CRM software, integrates with rental platforms like Airbnb and HomeAway to that end.<\/p>\n

The dashboard lets property management companies\u00a0sync operations across different booking platforms, manage\u00a0reservation check-ins and check-outs and adjust pricing, and offers a unified inbox to communicate with staff, team members and guests. Meanwhile, a multi-calendar tool helps managers control the availability and pricing of all the listings\u00a0they manage, filtering by city, tags, dates and prices.<\/p>\n

How are they making money? Soto\u00a0tells me that Guesty became profitable in 2016, and that the service\u00a0charges\u00a0property management companies differently based on their\u00a0needs. Pricing tiers are determined by\u00a0variants like\u00a0analytics and payment processing. Half\u00a0the company\u2019s revenue is\u00a0coming\u00a0from businesses in the U.S., and half is coming\u00a0from Europe\u00a0and Asia.<\/p>\n

Because it isn\u2019t possible to automate the entire short-term rentals process, Guesty,\u00a0which currently employs 70 people,\u00a0is also using some of its new funding to\u00a0hire\u00a0about 35 trained representatives to\u00a0reply to guest inquiries.<\/p>\n

Eventually, says Soto, the company has its sights set on other verticals, like hospitality management, and sees itself as a platform for improving assets in general. For now, it\u2019s focusing on these initial areas where it\u2019s\u00a0seeing success.<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Tom Sibley\/Getty Images<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Companies like Guesty, which just raised $3 million, are building tech to help property managers optimize their listings. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-340504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}