Europe’s largest hotel operator, AccorHotels, has purchased luxury home rental service Onefinestay for $168 million. The acquisition, announced last week, follows a trend among hotel groups to stay competitive against the growth of popular home-sharing websites, which have claimed a sizable share of the business and leisure travel markets.
“Onefinestay has successfully captured a sweet spot: a combination of needs that neither traditional hotels nor new actors of the sharing economy can meet,” says Sebastien Bazin, chairman and CEO of AccorHotels.
In acquiring Onefinestay, AccorHotels joins a handful of hotel corporations that have partnered with rival home-sharing startups, thereby diversifying their portfolios. Last year, Hyatt Hotels was part of a $40 million fundraising round for Onefinestay. Wyndham Hotels purchased stake in LoveHomeSwap, a subscription-based home swapping service. InterContinental Hotels Group has a partnership with Stay.com, a group that provides custom guides for tourists.
Onefinestay benefits from joining AccorHotels by capitalizing on the group’s wide customer base and international platform. AccorHotels has an inventory of 3,900 hotels and 510,000 rooms in 92 countries. It has already pledged to invest another $73 million into the home rental service, accelerating its expansion across 40 new cities around the world over the next five years. In that time, Onefinestay hopes to increase its revenue tenfold.
“Today, together with our recent investments, we are accelerating the transformation of our business model to capture the value creation linked to the rise of private rentals and also strengthening our presence in the luxury market,” adds Bazin.
The London-based home-sharing company was founded in 2010 by Greg Marsh, Demetrios Zoppos, Tim Davey and Evan Frank. Onefinestay offers high-end vacation and short-term home rentals combined with quality customer service, which includes a personal welcome on arrival, a team on call 24/7 and professional maintenance and management.
Onefinestay has an asset value of more than $5.6 billion and boasts a collection of 2,600 properties in locations such as London, New York, Paris, Los Angeles and Rome. Under AccorHotels group, the brand will remain an independent entity and continue to be led by its current management.
