Tujia.com, an online vacation rental service in China set up in December, has raised an undisclosed amount in its series A round from a consortium including two corporate peers.
Nasdaq-listed HomeAway joins Ctrip.com International, an online travel service provider in China also listed on Nasdaq, and venture capital firms, Lightspeed China Partners and CDH Investments, in Tujia’s financing.
Both HomeAway and Ctrip have themselves had corporate venturing backing – US-based publisher International Data Group invested $1m and reaped $26m from Ctrip while search engine Google backed HomeAway in 2010 ahead of its flotation. And HomeAway and Ctrip will increasingly work together, as well as with Tujia.
Brian Sharples, chief executive of HomeAway, said: "HomeAway seeks to make every vacation property in the world available to every traveler and so we’re excited to make this long term investment in Tujia.com as we believe they are best positioned to bring vacation rentals to China.
"We are also looking forward to a relationship with Ctrip.com, which understands the opportunities of the Chinese vacation rental market and currently highlights Tujia.com’s vacation rental properties on its homepage."