GuestReady, a service that helps home owners who use Airbnb and other services manage their properties professionally, has landed a $750,000 seed funding. The round was led by existing investor Swiss Founders Fund.
We wrote about the service when it launched in August, and now, three months later, CEO Alexander Limpert said it is seeing “very good demand” in the six cities where it is present. While Limpert did not provide revenue figures, he said that GuestReady has already performed over 1,000 services for customers. That ranges from sending representatives to check guests in and managing their check-out to handling housekeeping and general tasks and cleaning.
“Many of our hosts have tried Airbnb themselves and quickly realized that it requires a lot of dedication and is getting increasingly complex or they are out of town for a while and need someone to look after their homes for them,” Limpert, who formerly worked with Rocket Internet, added.
In what may be a reflection of the fact that more serious hosts look for a professional service, Limpert said that the properties that his company services have an average occupancy of more than 80 percent. That’s considerably higher, he argued, than the average Airbnb rate, which varies in the cities where GuestReady operates — from 42 percent in Amsterdam to 58 percent in Paris.
London-based GuestReady plans to use this new capital — which included contributions from Switzerland-based real estate firm Senn and Partner, and Airbnb executive Georg Bauser — to work on its products, create dedicated mobile apps and make new hires.