Austin-based vacation rental startup TurnKey has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from various high profile veteran investors in the travel industry, including:
- Richard Barton (co-founder Expedia, co-founder Zillow, Benchmark)
- Alexis De Belloy (HomeAway, Accel EIR)
- Barney Harford (CEO Orbitz)
- Robert Hohman (Expedia, CEO Hotwire, co-founder Glassdoor)
- Joey Levin (CEO, InterActiveCorp Search)
- Karl Peterson (co-founder Hotwire, TPG)
- Spencer Rascoff (co-founder Hotwire, CEO Zillow)
- Greg Slyngstad (co-founder Expedia, founder VacationSpot, Kayak Board)
Following investor members are also on the TurnKey board of directors:
- Gregg Brockway (co-founder Hotwire, co-founder TripIt, co-founder Chairish)
- Eric Goldreyer (founder BnB.com)
TurnKey launched its service in Austin, Texas in January 2013 and booked its first guest for SXSW in March.
Tnooz spoke with TJ Clark, CEO and co-founder of TurnKey regarding this funding. Clark says that the funding will be used to improve the technology, expanding to markets outside Austin, and adding new support staff to help in the expansion.
TurnKey provides end to end service for vacation rentals (VR). The company lists the vacation rental accommodation on their website and 25+ major VR portals, maintains the VR property during the guest stay, takes all guest query/calls 24/7, and generates periodical reports to the vacation rental owner.
The company currently services 35 homes.
TurnKey is working on mobile-based marketing, management and logistics systems to lower the cost for vacation rental owners and the improve the quality of service to guests.
TurnKey charges 18% commission on every transaction, so the company makes money only when the vacation rental owner makes money.