30 Million Monthly Users: How Michael Siebers Grew Holidu To a 9-Figure Company

In 2013, Michael Siebers graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. Just six years later, in 2019, he was named as one of the 30 most important entrepreneurs under 30 by Forbes. Today, he is the CTO of the vacation platform Holidu, which has raised over $120 million in venture capital and has more than 30 million website visitors per month.

Before Siebers co-founded Holidu in 2014, he was an early team member of Zalando, where he worked closely with the CTO to scale the venture. This paid off since this same CTO became one of Holidu’s first angel investors. In this interview, Michael Siebers talks about Holidu’s rapid growth and success, technology, and the future of the travel and vacation industries, among other things.

​​What exactly is Holidu and how does the platform differ from other vacation platforms like Airbnb or Booking.com?

Holidu is a search engine for vacation rentals where our mission is to finally make the search and booking of vacation rentals easy. The search engine allows travelers to book the ideal accommodation for the lowest price.

For this purpose Holidu gathers and compares the offers from more than 1,500 websites including Booking.com and VRBO which provides users with access to over 15 million properties worldwide. So with one search you find the vacation rentals from all the big and small vacation rental websites at the cheapest price they are advertised at.

Through an independent software and service solution called Bookiply, we also support vacation rental owners in managing their vacation homesome in the best way. Vacation rental owners not only want to list their rental on one website. They want to be on all websites, and with Bookiply we make it super easy for them to do so. Bookiply is multiplying their bookings with less work.

Which target groups is Holidu aimed at? For example, are business travelers also part of the target group?

Holidu's offer is aimed at all vacation home renters, families, friend groups, couples, and solo travelers. Since the Corona pandemic, vacation rentals are booming among those who are moving their home office elsewhere. Home office work allows many people to work from locations other than their own homes, and these are often vacation rentals in popular vacation destinations.

Fittingly, long-term stays have become increasingly popular. Bookings with stays of more than three weeks are no longer uncommon.

Why is technology so important today in the travel industry and how does technology play in the service Holidu offers to its customers?

The vacation rental market is still not fully transparent and technologically lags behind other markets. There are enormous opportunities here, particularly for our company. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated certain trends, such as the digitalization of the industry and people's much higher affinity for online shopping and bookings, both of which are a huge benefit for tech companies.

We believe in the power of technology to solve almost any problem. To provide our customers with the best possible user experience, we build our own technology and leverage machine learning.

Holidu currently offers about 15 million accommodations in over 35 thousand cities: How did you manage to build such an impressive portfolio in only 7 years?

Holidu was founded in Munich in 2014 and it was no surprise it became active in Germany first with its search engine. Germans love travel and vacation homes, which is why the vacation home market in this country is the third largest in the world. As soon as we successfully launched the first markets in Europe, we flipped the switch and expanded Holidu to 21 domains worldwide within a short period of time. Holidu now compares over 15 million listings worldwide on more than 1,500 vacation rental websites.

We were able to build on an incredibly strong team right from the start. Today, more than 300 travel- and tech- enthusiasts from over 40 nations are working to finally make searching and booking vacation homes easy. We have a technology-driven approach, this means that we always try to solve problems with the best technologies to solve the problems for the customer.

Of course, the growth was also made possible by our investors, including EQT, and 83North, the former Booking CEO Kees Koolen. The recent financings in 2020 and 2021 were a great vote of confidence for us in the midst of this unprecedented crisis, both in our company and in the industry. And they show what we have already achieved here and what great opportunities still lie ahead. More than $120 million in venture capital has now been raised by Holidu. In 2020, Holidu has grown by 30 percent despite all the corona-related difficulties, and in 2021 it has already grown by more than 100 percent by September. Holidu currently has more than 30 million website visitors per month.

What extensions do you plan to add to the platform in the future?

In order to better serve the significantly increased demand for domestic travel, we have worked hard to add even more regional booking portals to the Holidu portfolio. We will continue to work on this, as this trend will not flatten out any time soon.

Since Corona, we have quickly developed new features that users desire in the current situation, such as flexible cancellation and payment models. We will continue to invest heavily in product development and double our tech organization for this purpose. We can precisely determine customer needs with data, and we want to serve them in the best possible way with innovative technology.

Flexible cancellation has become immensely important for travelers. During the Corona crisis, millions of vacation plans suddenly fell through and customers feared for the money they had already paid. In the vacation rental market, free cancellations were rather unusual before Corona - unlike in the hotel market. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the Holidu team has been working to roll out new cancellation models with partner portals and vacation rental companies. Half of all providers now rely on this concept and we are working to increase this number even further.

We see that flexible conditions are in high demand among customers. Vacation homes with good cancellation options generate up to five times more bookings. So that we can reliably regulate this process, we have taken on the booking processing and coordinate the payments. After all, customer satisfaction is crucial.

Bookiply is already the market leader in various European destinations, and we are looking forward to expanding into more markets in the future.

Where do you see the vacation/travel industry in 5 years?

My personal assessment is that COVID-19 is a catalyst for many trends that have been emerging for a long time. We see that the trend from classic hotel vacation to alternative accommodation has accelerated a lot. We believe that this will continue. Also the trends of local travel, solo travel, the demand for a trip in nature, and also a stronger focus on sustainability.

What trends will shape the industry and how will you be a shaper?

At Holidu, we want to solve a core problem: the extremely high cancellation rate by homeowners. Because it's a nuisance when you find a house after a long search, book it, and get a cancellation out of nowhere a few days later. The reason is the often missing synchronization of the calendars of the various agency sites on the net. Our subsidiary Bookiply, through which landlords can advertise their house, provides a remedy - precisely by synchronizing between different platforms.

And, climate change and sustainability are big concerns currently, and this is only likely to increase in attention in the coming years and decades. We’ll see changes in how and where we choose to travel, with eco concerns already pushing some guests away from air travel and in favor of more environmentally-friendly methods of transport, accommodation, and destinations. We see that the environment is something our travelers care about, and so we will make it easier for these eco-conscious travelers to find more sustainable vacation rentals and drive more sustainable travel.