VaycayHero grabs $2.8M to take the pain out of vacation rentals

Uncertainty is the last thing you want to worry about when traveling, especially when it comes to where you’re staying.

VaycayHero offers a happy medium between renting home properties and ensuring that customer service is on par with hotel chains, and today the company announced that it’s closed a fresh $2.8 million seed round of funding. The consumer-facing service (formerly called Zaranga) only lists professionally managed vacation properties that it’s vetted ahead of time, which means there’s typically a team of people around to make sure your trip is pretty hassle-free.

This has definite potential. Some consumers avoid using peer-based rental services like Airbnb, which require property owners to manage all the details of a guest’s stay. I have at least one friend who said he’ll never use Airbnb again after not being able to get in touch with the property owner about the water going out. (Because no one wants to go days without showering. Nor do they want to scream repeatedly into the voicemail of the oblivious person who owns the house.)

Since launching in 2013, the startup told VentureBeat it’s seen 11,000 guests stay at properties using its service, and it’s seeing steady growth already this year in the total booking and properties listed.

The seed round itself comes from Alexis Ohanian, Garry Tan, Scott Banister, Microventures, Tamarisc, Stucture Capital, and others. VaycayHero said it plans to use the capital to bring on more workers, expand into more markets, and continue growing the overall business. The startup indirectly competes with Airbnb, HomeAway, and others.