We are pleased to announce that we have completed a £565k EIS-qualifying fundraise for TravelNest, a fast-growing business in the travel technology sector which is led by a highly experienced team and backed by former high-ranking employees of industry unicorn Skyscanner.

TravelNest’s platform helps holiday-rental owners with marketing and managing listings across 30+ channels, from Airbnb to Expedia, and has been proven to deliver significant uplifts in bookings and revenue.

The company is now processing over £40m in booking value annually for its customers and has significant potential to scale up globally.

TravelNest was founded by CEO Doug Stephenson in 2014 when he noticed the loss of time and numerous inefficiencies which property owners confronted when managing and promoting their holiday lettings. He launched the platform in 2018, enabling small-scale vacation rental hosts to set up, easily manage and optimise all of their marketing in one place.

Doug has since assembled a strong senior team, which includes Chris Brooks, the company’s Chief Financial Officer. He joined from FinTech company Modulr, where he was CFO for nearly four years, raising £130m equity. He was also previously Head of Finance at Cloudreach, including when it exited to Blackstone, and held roles at both Deloitte and KPMG.

Mark Logan, previously COO at Skyscanner during its growth and subsequent exit, is a Non-Executive Director at TravelNest. He has over 25 years’ experience with start-ups and technology companies, and was recently appointed Scotland’s first “chief entrepreneur”, acting as a senior adviser to the Scottish government.

Ian Zant-Boer, our CEO, says:

“The holiday home rental market has been consistently growing and has recently seen unprecedented demand, with Airbnb reporting that guest demand hit a record high in Q2 this year.”

“The TravelNest team has created a unique and powerful platform for hosts within the sector, delivering proven substantial uplifts in bookings and revenue.”

“TravelNest is operating in a highly lucrative market where it still has capacity to expand very significantly, becoming a global service, and this funding is intended to support that. TravelNest has the right technology build, infrastructure and management team, and we strongly believe it can become that global service for vacation rentals.”

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