AirDNA Buys Vacation Rental Tech Platform Uplisting

09.01.2024 - 17:21 / skift.com / Srividya Kalyanaraman

Short-term rental data provider AirDNA has acquired vacation rental software and channel management system Uplisting for an undisclosed sum. This marks the company’s foray into the property technology business.

New York-based Uplisting’s software oversees and synchronizes short-term rental listings across major platforms such as Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com. The company was founded in 2016 and had raised $300,000 in seed funding.

The deal closed in November, but AirDNA disclosed the transaction today.

The platform’s automation of essential functions, including booking updates and guest communication, is geared to streamline the operations of vacation rental hosts and property managers. In 2023, Uplisting handled approximately $400 million in bookings, according to the AirDNA announcement.

“Historically, AirDNA has been very good at research and investment as the kind of two steps at the very beginning of someone’s short-term rental journey,”  Demi Horvat, CEO of AirDNA, told Skift. “And what we’re doing with Uplisting is getting further into the next step of ‘operate’ and it also opens up the door for us to be helping our operators with optimizing their property.”

Horvat rejected the idea of conflict of interest arising with an independent data provider acquiring a software and channel management provider. 

“Our core product has always been the platform that helps people do their research on markets and invest in short term rentals. So I think there’s sometimes a view, especially with some parts of the market, like some of our enterprise customers, or with journalists, that we really are kind of a data business,” Horvat said. “One of the things that I think is really exciting is, we have been investing in a software delivery mechanism for some of the things to be more interactive, a richer experience and view of the different types of data points that our enterprise clients are looking to see in the market. So I’m excited about us continuing to do both.”

AirDNA is in the process of evaluating the Uplisting brand, and might roll up the Uplisting brand into AirDNA. AirDNA said it retained all of Uplisting’s 27 staff members. 

This was AirDNA’s second acquisition in 2023. In July, the company bought location intelligence platform Arrivalist, giving AirDNA access to location-specific data applicable to short-term rentals. That deal made both Arrivalist and AirDNA part of Alpine investors Predictis grouping, a group of software and data businesses.

“With this second acquisition in just six months, AirDNA is poised for continued growth and innovation, and with more developments in the pipeline, it is well positioned to expand its leadership position at the forefront of the short- term rental industry,”