Vancouver-based TravelAI has acquired whole-home vacation rental brand Owner Direct Vacation Rentals, including OwnerDirect.com. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
TravelAI said the acquisition, which includes all intellectual property, trademarks and domain names, will help drive traffic in the North American short-term rental (STR) market.
“OwnerDirect.com gives us a legacy platform with deep credibility in North America. Combined with our applied AI stack that allows us to automate the build, marketing and management of our entire portfolio, we can deliver more value to partners, better matches for travelers and a significantly expanded footprint across Canada and the U.S.” said John Lyotier, CEO and co-founder of TravelAI.
Owner Direct was initially founded in 1987 and has been using the OwnerDirect.com domain commercially since 1994.
“The brand helped define what whole-home vacation rentals could be long before today’s platforms existed,” Lyotier wrote on LinkedIn.
TravelAI listed plans for the brand, which include modernizing OwnerDirect.com with AI personalization, re-engaging with the brand’s historical audiences, scaling SEO, content and performance marketing initiatives and “positioning Owner Direct Vacation Rentals as a flagship in TravelAI’s short-term rental portfolio.”
In March 2024, TravelAi announced that it acquired the domain name for Latin American-STR rental startup Casai, which ceased operations in 2023. TravelAI then launched Casai.com as a metasearch site for luxury holiday rentals in the Mediterranean and Caribbean islands.
TravelAI now operates over 475 consumer-facing brands, including RentByOwner.com, Hotala.com, BedroomVillas.com and Smartours.com, which was just acquired in September.