A property listed by TurnKey Vacation Rentals
TurnKey Vacation Rentals
TurnKey Vacation Rentals announced Tuesday that it had secured $48 million in new funding, bringing the company’s total raised to $100 million since its inception in 2013.
The Austin-based company, which specializes in property management technology and luxury vacation rentals, obtained its largest funding round to date from current lead investor Alto Ventures. Other participants in the round included existing TurnKey investors Adams Street Partners, Greenspring Associates and Harmony Partners.
“We’re really excited about this additional funding, which we’re going to direct at the continued growth of our full-service management offering,” TurnKey President T.J. Clark said. “‘We’re excited to expand into new markets, using TurnKey technology to provide services directly to homeowners and small property owners.”
Co-founded by John Banczak and T.J. Clark in 2013, TurnKey offers a technology-enabled, comprehensive management system for vacation rentals, ensuring a standardized guest experience as more and more homeowners become local hospitality hosts. The company currently has properties listed in 80 locations in the US, according to Clark, and is set to surpass 5,000 homes soon, according to a press release.
TurnKey’s funding was announced two weeks after vacation rental company Sonder raised $225 million. When asked about the competition, Clark said that TurnKey had a much different model, choosing to pursue small homeowners of upscale properties rather than an asset-heavier portfolio of apartment buildings in urban areas, as Sonder does.
TurnKey’s homeowner management system dashboard
TurnKey
“We work with homeowners, typically a homeowner with a second home in a leisure destination,” Clark said. “Our inventory is typically three bedrooms and up, and Sonder is really competing head to head with hotels, taking on that potential risk and trying to arbitrage the long-term, short-term rental market as their business model.”
Some hotel brands have reacted to the short term rental industry’s threat by entering it themselves. Marriott International, the biggest hotelier in the world, announced in April its entry into home-sharing via Marriott Home & Villas. By partnering with technology-first firms like TurnKey, Marriott hopes to lend its brand equity to a curated portfolio of high-end vacation properties.
“We really want to expand the scope of homes that we offer with [Marriott] and watch this partnership grow,” Clark said. “We want to be a household name in the US, [and] we’re not there yet. The more places we are able to offer our rentals, the more opportunities that people will have to travel with us, and we think that will help grow our reputation.”