Good morning, folks. Hope you’re having an easy week. Please note that Dwell will hit your inboxes on Thursdays every week with a digest of the top short-term rental stories published on Skift. You can sign up for it on our newsletters page.
17.01.2024 - 11:29 / skift.com / Srividya Kalyanaraman
Good morning, folks! Hope you’re having an easy week. Please note that Dwell will hit your inboxes on Thursdays every week with a digest of the top short-term rental stories published on Skift. This week, we have a roster full of stories — from company shutdowns to acquisitions, the short-term rental industry is on the brink of consolidation and professionalization that industry insiders keep harping on. Plus the latest from corporate housing provider, Blueground.
New Year Bonus: Hope you aren’t busy this weekend — Skift’s much-awaited Megatrends 2024 is now live, and waiting for your read. But before you go, on the agenda today:
Miami-based Here.co, which offered fractional ownership investments in short-term rentals, has ceased operations. Launched in 2022, buoyed by the pandemic-induced interest in short-term rentals, Here aimed to allow everyone to invest and fractionally own short-term rental properties. But the macroeconomic conditions and higher interest rates forced the company to shut down – effective immediately.
Operational Details:
Here is the third company to cease operations in the recent past. The previous week saw Frontdesk, a property management company based in Wisconsin, terminate all 200 of its employees and suspend its operations. Despite securing nearly $26 million in venture capital, Frontdesk, which aspired to be a leading property manager in the U.S., faced a significant setback.
And in November, Cabana, a startup specializing in renting camper vans for vacations, actively sought potential buyers to avoid shutting down. Despite exhausting all attempts to secure additional venture capital, the company’s CEO, Scott Kubly, announced on LinkedIn that Cabana had ceased operations and initiated the sales process.
Short-Term Rental Investment Platform Here.Co Ceases Operations
Short-term rental data provider AirDNA has expanded its business into property technology by acquiring Uplisting, a vacation rental software and channel management system. Uplisting, based in New York, synchronizes short-term rental listings across major platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com.
AirDNA Expands Into Property Management Tech With Uplisting Acquisition
Blueground, a New York-based provider of furnished, flexible rentals for stays of 30 days or more, has entered into its first franchise agreement with Mitsubishi Estate, a real estate and hospitality company, to introduce its services in Japan.
This collaboration is part of Blueground’s partner network initiative launched in summer 2023 to expand its current portfolio of 15,000 apartments in 32 cities. Under the agreement, Mitsubishi Estate will establish a network of 13,000 furnished apartments in major Japanese cities, gaining access to
Good morning, folks. Hope you’re having an easy week. Please note that Dwell will hit your inboxes on Thursdays every week with a digest of the top short-term rental stories published on Skift. You can sign up for it on our newsletters page.
Miami-based Here.co, which offered fractional ownership investments in short-term rentals, has ceased operations.
Aviation investors will have to wait a little bit longer to get a piece of TAP Air Portugal. The carrier’s long-awaited privatization is delayed up to a year following the recent sudden resignation of Portugal’s prime minister.
Dealmaking has kept short-term rental businesses in Europe busy. The past few months have seen an uptick in activity — be it mergers, or acquisitions or rebrandings.
Travel Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) group Travelsoft is thrilled to announce a significant milestone in its journey to revolutionise the travel tech industry. Today, Travelsoft welcomed Capza, a prominent investment firm, through its Flex Equity Mid-Market II fund, to accelerate and fortify the company’s ongoing consolidation strategy.
American Airlines has sued airline ticket consolidator U.S.A. Gateway — which does business as GTT Travel — alleging that GTT duped travelers into thinking they were booking direct with American, and then gouged them with exorbitant fares and fees.
The head of an influential aircraft lessor expects more airline consolidation in Europe, naming Scandinavia’s SAS, Italy’s ITA, and TAP Air Portugal as possible takeover candidates.
Airbnb Mulls Removing Cleaning Fees as a Separate Charge: Hosts may be sabotaging their own bookings by levying excessively high cleaning fees. It is turning off many people to Airbnb, which is a concern for the company.
Verint provides customer service software to roughly 40 airline clients, among those other verticals. The Long Island, New York-based company is still gaining new airline business, but much of it is coming from existing customers.
The Travel Corporation has merged its six brands into one Global Tour Rewards program, with brand awareness behind this seemingly vanilla approach to loyalty. Trafalgar, Insight Vacations, Luxury Gold, Costsaver, Brendan Vacations, and Contiki are now aligned under one rewards program.
Anko van der Werff has a thing for airline bankruptcies. Either they follow him or he follows them. All of the three previous airlines he has worked for and led, Aeromexico as CCO, and as CEOs of Avianca and now SAS have gone through their rites of passage after he joined or after he left. And he relishes his role as tthye sharp but genial turnaround artist.
Consolidation is coming to short-term rentals. It’s just a matter of how, when and of what nature?