Company: Hostaway
Founder: Marcus Rader
Website: www.hostaway.com
About Hostaway
Hostaway is the largest and highest-valued short-term rental management platform in the world. The platform launched in 2015 when founders Marcus Rader, Saber Kordestanchi, and Mikko Nurminen identified a critical gap in the vacation rental sector. Property managers needed one platform to handle reservations, guest messaging, revenue analytics, and channel management.
Starting as a lean and bootstrapped team, the company built a comprehensive system that would eventually set the standard for short-term rental property management worldwide.
Hostaway has since expanded into more than 90 countries and built a remote workforce across 44 nations. Its integrated marketplace of over 200 partners gives property managers a seamless connection to tools for dynamic pricing, marketing, automation, and analytics. This marketplace approach has become a model for other software as a service firms aiming to provide customers with an ecosystem rather than a single product.
Hostaway has helped professionalize the vacation rental market, showing that software can transform what was once a fragmented industry into a data-driven global network. Its use of artificial intelligence is particularly notable. From automated guest messaging to smart pricing and multilingual support, Hostaway delivers advanced tools that lower costs and boost efficiency for property managers of all sizes. These innovations allow smaller operators to compete with large hospitality brands, raising the bar for technology across the sector.
Last year, Hostaway became the highest-valued vacation rental property management software company in the industry, following its record-breaking $365 million funding round in December 2024. The investment is fueling ambitious international expansion into key markets such as Spain, France, and Italy, and supports ongoing product development and AI innovation. Hostaway is now widely recognized as the highest valued vacation rental property management software company in the industry, and the first short-term rental tech unicorn (recognized on Wikipedia).
Featured by G2 in the 100 fastest growing software companies of 2025, Hostaway’s growth proves that a SaaS company can scale globally while staying agile and customer-focused. By maintaining a fully remote workforce, the company draws talent from around the world and demonstrates a modern approach to building and supporting complex software. Its success highlights how SaaS firms can thrive even in volatile markets when they combine a strong product vision with resilience and continual innovation.
Hostaway represents the best of modern software as a service: global reach, bold, cutting-edge technology, and a strong connection with its users, building products that really make a difference in their lives.
