Vacation Rental Industry Evolution Creates Urgent Need for LeisureLink Distribution Management Services
SALT LAKE CITY, UT – January 20, 2016 LeisureLink, the world’s leader in distribution and booking solutions for vacation rentals, announced today that it has closed a $17M round of growth funding. The capital, provided by Clearstone Ventures, Kinderhook Industries, and Escalate Capital Partners, will be used to scale company operations to meet the rapidly expanding demand for LeisureLink’s services.
A travel technology innovator since 2007, LeisureLink helps thousands of vacation rental lodging providers grow their bookings through three distinct offerings: Distribution, Reservations and Technology services. Vacation Rentals are one of the fastest growing categories in travel, and the industry has seen significant changes recently as consumer awareness grows and the world’s leading travel brands make major investments in the category.
“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.”
“I love finding a desperately needed business that can capture market leadership without too much attention,” said Jim Armstrong, Managing Director at Clearstone Venture Partners. “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.”
LeisureLink has delivered over $1B in bookings to vacation rental management companies and is growing rapidly. The company plans to utilize the additional capital to expand its operations and enhance its industry-leading technology platform. “We are grateful for the trust that our customers have put in us by adopting the LeisureLink distribution platform,” said LeisureLink COO, Jim Barsch. “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.”
