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For people who own a vacation home they aren't at very often, managing the place as a rental can be a hassle. With all the time it takes to advertise on multiple sites, handle guest check-ins and deal with cleaning and maintenance, it can require more energy than expected and often become a huge pain. That’s the issue TurnKey Vacation Rentals hopes to solve through its service: a comprehensive vacation property management experience that takes the headache out of the process.
Among the Austin-based startup’s services is the simultaneous posting of rental homes on VRBO, Airbnb, HomeAway, TripAdvisor and a host of other relevant sites, taking the onus of marketing off of the property owner entirely. Property management, housekeeping, guest interaction and a secure online checkout process round out the service offering, which could prove particularly helpful to clients who work full-time jobs and/or don’t live near their rental properties.
This summer, TurnKey raised $3 million led by Silverton Partners and a roster of angel investors well-entrenched in the travel industry: Expedia co-founder Rich Barton; Hotwire cofounder Gregg Brockaway; Hotwire cofounder Karl Peterson; Zillow CEO and Hotwire cofounder Spencer Rascoff; Expedia cofounder and Kayak board member Greg Slyngstad; Bedandbreakfast.com cofounder Eric Goldreyer; IAC Search & Applications CEO Joey Levin; Alexis de Belloy of Homeaway and Accel; and Rob Greyber of Egencia. This adds to an initial $1.5 million round in August 2013.
"This management team is unusually deep and experienced and we really like the market because it’s an opportunity to apply leading edge technology to an industry that has lagged in technology uptake,” said Silverton Partners founder Bill Wood, who has joined TurnKey’s board, in a press release announcing the round.
TurnKey’s co-founder and chairman, John Banczak, echoed the sentiment, saying, “We see a huge opportunity in delivering a better tech-enabled guest and owner solution, combined with lower fees, to this high-growth market. Vacation rental homes are valuable income opportunities for millions of owners -- and we believe that the owner can maximize their rental opportunity by taking advantage of leading edge technology and best practices.”
Particularly of interest during massive events like the Austin City Limits Music Festival, South by Southwest and annual FormulaOne races is TurnKey’s proximity to the high volume of residential listings on sites like HomeAway, Airbnb and VRBO. While its scope is decidedly national, intense periods of property saturation right in the brand’s backyard may give it a competitive advantage over future counterparts while it dyes itself in the wool of a city known for large, crowd-drawing extravaganzas that fill up vacation properties by the thousands as hotels book to capacity.
TurnKey is expanding and currently continuing to hire.
