It’s being called the “Kayak of vacation rentals” and it got even more attention recently when it secured Series A financing led by Recruit Holdings’ RGIP Fund and Quest Venture Partners.
But San Francisco-based Tripping.com wasn’t always about meta-search for vacation homes. It started three years ago as a social travel site that connected travelers with local people.
Recalled CEO and co-founder, Jen O’Neal (right), “We launched from TechCrunch Disrupt NY and had users in 175 countries within 30 days. The growth was exciting but we quickly realized that the social platform would be tough to monetize. So we decided to take our team to Tahoe, rent a house and come up with a better business model.
“Renting a vacation home took too long, so we went camping instead. While sitting around the campfire, it dawned on us that there were no metasearch players in the vacation rentals space. It’s a massive industry – $100 billion between the US and Europe alone – and it seemed like there was a need to aggregate rental inventory. Within a month, we’d completely pivoted into our current model.”
Since then, it hasn’t looked back. Today, it is the leading platform for vacation homes and short-term rentals, offering over one million properties across 50,000 cities worldwide, curated from over a dozen top travel rental sites including HomeAway, Booking.com, Wimdu, Interhome, HouseTrip, Flipkey and more.
The idea is simple. “We make it easy for travelers to search across multiple sites at once: on Tripping, you can search, compare and save on your vacation rental bookings,” said O’Neal whom we met at PhoCusWright Dublin.
Its goal is even simpler – “to be a global leader in the vacation rental space”.
“We’re intent on securing our lead in the space. If we’re doing our job right, we’re helping travelers by making it easier for them to find their dream vacation homes. And we’re helping our partners by sending qualified leads their way.”
O’Neal comes from a tech background, having started her career as an early employee at StubHub (a ticket marketplace that was acquired by eBay for $310 million). She then held senior marketing positions at start-ups in Europe and Central America before founding Tripping.
Co-founder & COO Jeff Manheimer comes from a travel background. He fell in love with the hospitality industry as a college student, working as a room service employee at Hyatt. He quickly worked his way up to Hyatt Corporate where he ran electronic distribution with Expedia. He then spent time at Travelzoo before joining Tripping.
The duo were clearly excited about the investment round which was announced just a day before the PhoCusWright conference in Dublin.
The Tripping team with Recruit executives after the funding announcement
Said O’Neal, “We were introduced to Recruit through one of our investors. We’re excited to work with them, as their team has deep knowledge of the travel space. We’re currently using the funds to scale operations and launch our first real marketing campaigns.”
Thus far, most of its growth has been viral. “We’re kicking off some marketing campaigns this month across the usual channels (such as SEM) and returns have been positive so far. We also launched a free concierge service, which seems to be spreading through word of mouth since it’s a helpful service for travelers who want us do to all the work for them.”
The road ahead will not be without its challenges, she knows. “Being the first mover is always a fun challenge. We’ve spent the past 2 years figuring out the market, the product and the economics behind our business. Now that we’ve nailed those core areas, our new challenge is scaling the business in an efficient way.
“There are always growing pains along the way, but we’ve laid the groundwork to (hopefully) make things go smoothly as we grow. I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of several high-growth companies so I have a good idea of what it will take to scale Tripping.”
