Stay Alfred, a Spokane, Wash. startup that rents out downtown apartments and turns them into short-term rentals, has raised $47 million to fuel expansion across the U.S. Nine Four Ventures led the Series B deal, which pushes total funding to date in the 7-year-old company to $62 million.
Stay Alfred has nearly 2,000 travel apartments across 28 markets. It leases individual units and entire buildings in cities and then rents them out on a short-term basis to travelers. The 230-person company handles the furnishing, cleaning, booking, and customer service for each rental. Customers are primarily leisure travelers or people who want a hotel experience with the flexibility of a furnished apartment.
“We recognized that most options in our industry lacked the consistency that travelers still seek, even as those travelers pursue alternatives to the bland shoeboxes of the traditional hotel offering,” Stay Alfred CEO Jordan Allen said in a statement. “We’ve focused on developing the infrastructure and expertise to deliver not only a consistent, high-end experience for our guests, but for our developer partners as well.”
Stay Alfred originally started as a short-term rental company, such as Airbnb or VRBO, but pivoted to a hybrid of a hotel and vacation rental. Allen, who co-founded the company when he was 28 years old, previously described his business as “Marriott meets Airbnb.”
“If you’re here, it means that you want more from the places you stay,” the company’s website reads. “You’re no longer satisfied with that cramped hotel or the packed full of other people’s stuff stuffiness of a typical vacation rental. You want to live like a local… without the local (sorry Airbnb).”
Stay Alfred projects a $110 million run rate for 2018. It competes with another Washington startup, Seattle-based Domicile, which raised a $5 million round last month.
