Holidu, an aggregator that allows you to compare rental offers from hundreds of travel websites, is available in Poland since 20th December. Its database now includes over 4 million holiday lettings.
The platform aggregates rental offers for houses, apartments and rooms from all over the world. It uses image recognition technology to recognize offers that appear on more than one website and combine all of their versions into one, giving you the guarantee of the best price. Holidu team estimates that this procedure lets you save up to 55% on the very same rental.
Holidu deals with one of the biggest problems of holiday lettings: market fragmentation. The sheer amount of available websites makes searching for a holiday apartment exhausting and unsatisfying. Many owners of holiday rental properties put their offers up on multiple portals, such as booking.com or Novasol. Because of different commission policies the price of the same rental may differ significantly across various websites. Holidu eliminates the problem by automatically choosing the best offer for a single letting.
This search engine is also available as a free-of-charge mobile app for both iOS and Android.
The company decided to enter the Polish market basing on a series of detailed analyses that determined the country’s potential regarding holiday rentals. Holidu estimates that this sector of the Polish market is worth about 1 billion euro. High tourist potential of cities such as Zakopane, Warszawa, Kraków, Wrocław and Gdańsk draws both local and international travelers. The average cost of renting a property for four people is about 350 PLN (80 euro) per night.
Holidu is a Munich-based company that was founded in 2014 by two brothers – Johannes and Michael Siebers. “We want to offer new quality of searching and booking holiday rentals to our users,” said Johannes Siebers, the CEO. “We are excited that our search engine makes the process easier for yet another country.”
The main investor of Holidu is EQT Ventures – a paneuropean VC fund that brings together investors such as Hjalmar Winbladh, Kees Koolen and Lars Jörnow. Koolen, the former CEO of booking.com, said: “Holidu has developed impressive technology and traction in a very short time period. We are excited to work with this excellent and highly committed team to seize the opportunity.”
