SAN FRANCISCO, October 29, 2018 – Properly, Inc., a San Francisco-based company that provides a cleaning and quality management platform to Airbnb hosts and vacation rental managers, today announced a $8.5 million Series A led by Asset Management Ventures, with participation by AccorHotels and prominent travel investors.
Guest concerns around quality and consistency are a central challenge for the short-term and vacation rental industry. According to industry expert and former PhoCusWright CEO Simon Lehmann, “unpredictable quality” is the single largest concern of travelers with the industry. Properly’s management tools allow hospitality brands, property managers, and Airbnb hosts to ensure their quality standards are delivered for every guest.
“Home sharing and vacation rentals have grown three times faster than traditional hotels over the last decade, but mass market travelers have been slow to embrace the category because they don’t trust what they’re getting,” says Alex Nigg, CEO and founder of Properly. “If vacation rentals are to become a real alternative to hotels, the industry needs to set a standard. Properly helps ensure that guests arrive to a safe, clean property – every time.”
Properly allows hospitality brands and property managers to set quality standards for their team, manage their operation, and confirm that work meets their expectations. Photo-based checklists in Properly’s mobile app describe precisely how a task must be done; for example, cleaners see exactly how to stage a room or how to make a bed correctly. Maintenance tasks, such as changing batteries on a smoke detector or fixing problems like furniture damaged by past guests, and other jobs are scheduled through Properly, ensuring these quality, health and safety requirements are fulfilled and documented. And field staff document damage in the Properly app and take photos so property managers can inspect their work.
Properly is the perfect partner for branded collections – such as AccorHotel’s onefinestay – as the platform supports the management of stringent brand standards across hundreds of property managers or thousands of their service providers at a truly global scale.
Alongside its quality management tools, Properly provides hospitality brands, property managers and hosts with access to a global network of service providers, and over 10,000 service providers have already signed up. The network offers local support, whether for brands that must inspect homes across dozens of markets, property managers staffing up for peak season, or an individual host that needs a cleaner to start listing her home.
“The home sharing and vacation rental industry is a massive, exciting market; just look at the level of investment and consumer interest in the space,” said Asset Management Ventures partner, Rich Simoni. “Properly’s unique combination of quality management tools and a marketplace of service providers positions it to address the next wave of change – establishing brands and standards that attract and retain mass market travelers.”
Founded in 2014, Properly is currently used by over 20,000 property managers and hosts worldwide and is popular in North America, Australia, and Western Europe. In addition to Asset Management Ventures and AccorHotels, this funding round included a number of prominent investors and travel industry figures including Ev Williams, Simon Lehmann, Fabio Cannavale, Tobias Wann, and Tom Hale.
