Irvine-based vacation rental software company BookingPal said last week it raised $12 million in a funding round, led by New York City-based Valor Capital Group.
The round included participation from Altabix, the corporate venture capital fund of Mexican hotel franchise Hoteles City Express, as well as continued participation from existing investors including Spanish VC Amadeus Ventures, Boston-based PAR Capital Management and Silicon Valley-based Plug and Play Ventures.
BookingPal makes cloud-based technology software that allows property management companies to list and monitor for-rent properties across multiple vacation rental sites such as AirBnB, Booking.com and HomeAway.
Chief Executive Alex Aydin said demand for alternative accommodations and rentals continue to grow, and Valor invested because it recognized the opportunity.
“Property management is a very fragmented space—there are hundreds of companies,” he said. “We are always continuing to add [customers], so more of their users can have access to our services.”
More than 30 vacation portal sites can be connected by using the company’s product, according to BookingPal’s website.
The company was founded in 2013 by Aydin, who launched several other startups including Santa Ana-based mortgage loan comparison platform Icanbuy, which was acquired by Calabasas-based Informa Research Services in 2012. Details of that deal are undisclosed.
Aydin was also a founder of Irvine-based Procom Technology, a computer component manufacturer whose intellectual property rights and assets were acquired by former Santa Clara-based computer company Sun Microsystems in 2005 for $50 million.
Notable BookingPal board members include Mark Moshayedi, managing partner and founder at Irvine-based real estate investment company Space Investment Partners.
He’s also a founder of Santa Ana-based storage device maker STEC Inc., which was acquired by Irvine’s Western Digital in 2013 for $340 million.
Last year, Moshayedi told the Business Journal that while most of his work is currently in real estate, he keeps close tabs on emerging technologies to see where those firms’ employees are located, in order to better invest in markets—such as Orange County—that are attracting talented bases of workers.
Along with Moshayedi, former San Francisco Mayor Mark Farrell and Vahid Manian, a former senior vice president at Broadcom, are also on the board.
As part of the investment, Antoine Colaco, a general partner at Valor, has joined the board as well.
The new funding will be used to continue expansion at the company’s offices near the University of California-Irvine, and to add capabilities to its software, such as revenue management, which will allow property managers to see who their market competitors are and how they are pricing their units.
“The goal is to continue building our technology and to continue expanding into Europe, it’s a big market for us,” Aydin said.
The company has 120 employees and raised nearly $23 million in total to date, including two previous rounds.
Recent hires include Joel Schoen, the former senior director of business development and strategy for vacation rentals at Choice Hotels, and Yohannes Semere, former senior director of revenue management at Oakwood Worldwide.
