Dubai-based Real Estate startup and private property manager Short Stay Vacation Homes (Short Stay) has successfully raised $1.96M in its latest funding round led by Africa-based SK Group.
Founded in 2017, Short Stay Vacation Homes manages privately-owned apartments across Dubai, which guests from all across the region and the world can rent on a short-term basis. Licensed by the Dubai Department of Tourism & Commerce Marketing, Short Stays aims to redefine the hospitality industry by offering guests a home away from home, with highly accessible seamless servicing. Familiarizing Dubai with the concept of Holiday Homes, the UAE-based startup offers elevated services in contemporary spaces, to provide a unique stay experience for business or leisure travelers.
As most recently recorded in our Q3 2021 UAE Venture Investment Report, investor interest in the UAE shifted towards industries with faster turnaround and Tech ventures with scale promise, where funds seem to be heavily channeled towards FinTech, Transport & Logistics (T&L), and E-commerce. To that effect, UAE-based Real-Estate startups observed an almost 95% YoY dip in capital raised by Q3 2021, closing 1 more deal, however, than the same time last year. This latest investment ranks the highest this year, surpassing HotDesk’s $1M SEED round earlier this year- both, paving the way for innovations in the shared economy, and the access-over ownership approach to Real Estate.
Short Stay currently manages more than 75 properties in popular residential and tourist areas such as Downtown Dubai, Jumeirah Beach Residences, Jumeirah Lakes Towers, and Dubai Marina, which gives a favorable position to benefit from the reopening of the country and the return of globally anticipated events such as Expo 2020. The six-month-long event has recorded 2.5 million visits so far, helping the tourism sector to recover steadily, where Short Stay seems to have catered optimal offerings as Founder Jugal Khushalani highlighted “In addition to increased occupancy, the average length of stays has also steadily increased since December 2020. Guests are taking longer trips away as short-term rentals offer larger spaces, flexible payment terms, enabling people to combine work with leisure.”
The funding round, led by Africa’s SK Group, will help Short Stay acquire more units as part of its plans to scale up its network of properties to more than 500 units across Dubai by the fourth quarter of 2022 as the startup stated. Khushalani elaborated that within the real estate ecosystem, more landlords have been joining the wave of short-term occupancy leveraging the significant increase of touristic footfall. In light of this growth potential-filled investment Jugal Khushalani concludes with high hopes for their position in the industry “Over the last five years, the industry has witnessed a steep surge in demand for ‘home-away-from-home experiences that short-term rentals offer customers, along with high standards of cleanliness and safety… Dubai’s short-term rental market has seen double-digit growth and with Expo 2020, we only expect it to rise further.”
