Spanish startup, Knok, a holiday home exchange community that competes with the UK’s Love Home Swap and legacy player IHEN, has raised a further €500,000 (~$645k) to help it accelerate international growth and build out its technology. The backing comes from private investors and adds to the company’s initial €250,000 (~$323k) of self-funding.
Founded in 2011, Barcelona-based Knok lets members connect so that they can swap homes as an alternative to staying in a hotel or rented holiday home when on vacation. Alongside its community features, the site provides add-ons such as bespoke home-swapping insurance, “smart” search, personalised exchange recommendations, and private messaging to protect the privacy of its members.
The startup makes money primarily by charging members a subscription, and claims 20,000 users in 159 countries who Knok says can make savings of between 1,500 and 2,500 euros for a 15‐day vacation. In addition, the pitch is that via home swapping members enjoy larger and more comfortable accommodation compared to a hotel and also benefit from the local knowledge of the home owner — a very similar pitch to Love Home Swap.
To put Knok’s new round of funding into context, however, Love Home Swap announced in November that it had raised a further £800k from MMC Ventures, bringing its total funding since launch in late 2009 to £1.65m (~$2.5m).
Knok is a new generation home swap community. Knok takes a great idea, traveling on home exchange, one step further: a technology platform that suggests your ideal exchange partners based on your profile. Knok combines a very easy-to-use site with a smart search algorithm; reinforces the trust in the community through friends’ and members’ reviews; offers an insurance that covers members home while swapping; integrates Facebook to discover your social connections; and provides a seamless exchange experience, protecting and verifying...
LoveHomeSwap.com is a homeswapping exchange that uses social media to assist in finding vacation exchanges worldwide. LoveHomeSwap.com has combined a proven demand for homeswapping with social media to create a global reach for a segment of the market that wants to explore living like a local as a holiday travel concept and save on the cost of vacations. The formula has been in existence in an unorganised way for decades and what Love Home Swap bring to the table is...
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