Vacasa announced it has purchased Oasis Collections, a short-term rental company with listings in U.S. and international cities including Barcelona, Chicago, London, Milan, Paris, and Santiago. With the exclusive listings added from this acquisition, Vacasa moves into the No. 1 spot as the largest vacation rental management company in North America with 10,600 properties in its inventory.
Although Oasis raised $35 million in funding, the company had been struggling over the year.
In 2016, AccorHotels invested in Oasis, and the company took on an additional $2.5 million in funding from an undisclosed investor in early 2017, as Oasis grew to more than 2,000 properties in 22 cities worldwide and developed a strong B2B element, marketing its urban properties to business travelers.
In August 2017, Hyatt injected a “significant investment” into the company, and AccorHotels took the opportunity to exit. With Hyatt’s investment, according to Skift, “[Oasis founder and CEO] Stanberry said he hopes the new partnership with Hyatt will help Oasis reach its goal of being in 50 markets by 2019 and expanding into the Asia-Pacific market, as well as increasing brand awareness for Oasis and accessing an even larger customer base.”
However, after working with Hyatt, Oasis actually lost inventory.
By the time Oasis sold to Vacasa, the company displayed only 826 listings—mostly nonexclusive—in 17 markets, a 59 percent decline in inventory in 18 months.
Last week at Skift Global Forum, Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian discussed Hyatt’s investment in Oasis and what the company has learned about vacation rentals from these businesses. “We are high on companies that have control over the inventory,” he said.
“I believe we will see consolidation of platforms that don’t have control over inventory” Hoplamazian added. “But you have to have control over the inventory.” He acknowledged that these businesses are harder to scale and more expensive to operate . . . We’ve learned a lot from the B2B and B2C sides of this business, and we see more opportunity in B2C; and we are going to continue to look at this business on the home front.”
Vacasa will look to convert Oasis’s nonexclusive listings into exclusive contracts.
“For us, it’s crucial that in every market we manage homes, we offer our guests the same, high-quality experience that they have grown accustomed to across the world with Vacasa,” said Eric Breon, founder and CEO of Vacasa, in its press release. “Our acquisition of Oasis enables us to enter new and popular urban markets in international destinations, while bringing on employees in those areas that know the local communities.”
Vacasa plans to maintain Oasis’ footprint and retain all of the company’s employees, including founder Parker Stanberry, who will be joining the team with a focus on growing the corporate and international business. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
RSS