Vacation Rental Service Tujia.com Raising from LightSpeed

Tujia.com an online vacation rental service in China targeting middle to high-end Chinese travelers has just raised a new round of funding from investors including LightSpeed Venture Partners, CDH Investments, Ctrip and HomeAway, the largest vacation rental in the world.

Luo Jun, CEO of Tujia.com, said the funding will be used to expand its operations and service capabilities to meet the increasing demand in the emerging online vacation rental market within China, and the funding gives Tujia.com the ability to invest in strategic business development.

Screenshot of Tujia.com

Tujia was founded by former CRIC co-president Luo Jun and Escapia CTO Melissa Yang. The company provides three types of services: 1) online booking for middle and high-end holiday aprtments; 2) housekeeping service for properties; 3) open trusteeship. Tujia has been seeing decent growth in its business and customers since its founding in December 2011.

Brian Sharpies, CEO of HomeAway said “HomeAway seeks to make every vacation property in the world available to every traveler and so we are excited to make this long term investment in Tujia.com as we believe they are best positioned to bring vacation rentals to China.”

Ctrip.com, which understands the opportunities in China’s ever growing vacation rental market, highlighted the vacation rental properties of Tujia.com on its homepage, signaling it’s seeking partners to enhance its competitive edge in the competition with eLong.com and Qunar.com. Qunar received a major investment from Chinese search leader Baidu.

With the increasingly fierce competition and the diversified needs among customers, working together sounds like a better choice than working alone. Ctrip.com made a nice move to form a partnership with Tujia, through which the two are entitled to mutual benefits.