German private accommodation rental site Gloveler is under preliminary insolvency, meaning that it continues to operate as normal while administrators look at options.
The site, which went live in 2009, claims to be "the oldest provider of private accommodations in Germany". It launched a channel manager business vacancychannel.com in 2011 which connects property owners to distribution partners including booking.com, HRS and hostelworld.
The deadline for a solution - new investors, a sale or liquidation - is November 1, although the preliminary insolvency period can also be extended.
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Gloveler said:
"Yes, unfortunately we are in preliminary insolvency proceedings. They were caused because of disagreements among our (former) shareholders that resulted in blocking important entrepreneurial decisions. So our own capital was exhausted in September.
"If you look at our balance sheets and compare them to our competitors our figures look very good. We need only some thousand Euros more (per year!) to be in the black.
"Unlike our competitors we never saw ourselves as a money burning company that has to raise 130 million each year as they are structurally deficient (see Airbnb).
"Our aim from the very beginning was to grow slowly, but steadily, being highly efficient at the same time. Unfortunately we failed on the finishing straight."
The site has some 70,000 properties on its books, 80% of which are in Germany. The spokesperson explained that Gloveler never intended to compete with Airbnb and other global platforms.
In 2015 the site attracted five million unique users and, while acknowledging that this is relatively modest, the spokesperson talked in terms of "quality traffic" and "a high conversion rate compared with our competitors".
Specifically, it claims a strong SEO ranking for its keywords, having been in the market since 2009.
Related reading from Tnooz:
Vacasol files for bankruptcy (Sept16)
LeisureLink shuts down (Sept16)