By Jordan Phelps
LeisureLink, a Salt Lake City-based company, announced today that they closed a $17 million round of growth funding. Founded in 2007, Leisurelink is the world’s leader in distribution and booking solutions for vacation rental companies to help maximize profits. Clearstone Ventures, Kinderhook Industries and Escalate Capital Partners all participated in the round.
“We are excited about the capabilities that we are building internally and the expanding partnerships that we are creating with third-party distributors, as these will allow us to deliver even greater booking volume to our customers while enhancing our customer service,” said LeisureLink COO, Jim Barsch.
The company has delivered over $1 billion in bookings to vacation rental management companies and are growing rapidly. A recent report from Research and Markets predicts that the vacation rental market will reach $169.7 billion by 2019. LeisureLink has three offerings to help manage and increase this growth including distribution, reservations, and technology services.
“While the growth of the category is great news for vacation rental management companies, the task of distributing, merchandising and managing their inventory across the dynamic landscape of third-party distribution is growing increasingly complex,” explained LeisureLink CEO, Julian Castelli. “Vacation rental suppliers need connectivity, tools, and expert services to benefit from this market opportunity. LeisureLink is the leading provider of these services, and as a result, we are seeing explosive demand for our services.”
LeisureLink is planning to use the growth capital to expand its operations and enhance its technology platform. Vacation rentals are one of the fastest growing travel categories and LeisureLink will use the additional resources to scale to demand of the market.
The Research and Markets report also states that vacation rental market is largely unregulated which causes problems for vacationers and managers. LeisureLink helps to provide the tools rental companies need to manage their destinations and minimize problems that could arise.
“We believe LeisureLink is a better way to invest in the fast-growing online vacation rental marketplace than Airbnb, HomeAway or any of the customer facing sites. We represent the suppliers, don’t have to reacquire our customers, and have a terrific performance-based revenue model,” said Jim Armstrong, Managing Director at Clearstone Venture Partners.
