Japanese Short-term rental startup secures $7M in Series B funding round

February 10, 2020
Share this Post: 

With the looming Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan's tourism is facing record numbers and a shortage in hotel rooms to accommodate the popular even. That's where H20 comes in.

The startup announced it has raised $7 million in Series B funding from Samsung Ventures, Stonebridge Ventures, IMM Investment and Shinhan Capital, bringing its total raised to $18 million.

H2O allows owners to manage operations, housekeeping and bookings from different online travel agencies on its platform, lowering the cost of doing business. The company also recently launched H2O, a vacation rental brand, to expand its real estate development business, including a new hotel near Universal Studio Japan.

The company began in 2015 with Wahome in South Korea, a home cleaning service, before launching H2O two years later after acquiring several hospitality management companies in Japan, including a housekeeping service for vacation rentals. There are currently about 5,000 managed rooms connected to the platform, which is used by about 25 online travel agencies. Since the third-quarter of 2018, revenue has doubled every quarter, says Founder and CEO John Lee.

Lee, who studied hotel administration at Cornell University and previously worked in banking at Morgan Stanley, told TechCrunch in an email that there were three market trends that made launching a hospitality business in Japan compelling.

Read more here.

February 10, 2020

Subscribe to our mailing list to get the famous, free Friday newsletter!

News and analysis to help build better online marketplace businesses, in your inbox, every Friday

Related News

Nils K
Ringier's Nils Körber on ArtificiaI Intelligence, Training the Machine, and Talking about Problems

"What would you do with one million interns?" The award for the best question at the PropTech and Portal Watch...

Read More
Untitled Design 13
As OnTheMarket Hits 15,000 Advertisers, Zoopla Fights Back with Big Agency Deal

The British property portal Zoopla has announced a new long-term listings deal with Dexters, one of London's top agencies with...

Read More
Untitled Design 12
LeBonCoin Suffers Data Leak and Boliga Comes Under Cyber Attack on Same Weekend

LeBonCoin, the leading French horizontal marketplace owned by Adevinta, has acknowledged that some of its users' personal information was exposed...

Read More
Number 2S Challenging Hero Image 2
Analysis: Can Zoopla, Realtor.com and Domain See Off Challengers and Close the Gap to Market Leaders?

Well-funded challenger portals have been generating a lot of headlines in the industry recently. CoStar has been explicit about its...

Read More

Editor's Pick