HomeToGo Turns to SPAC to Go Public

Another startup is turning towards SPAC as a means of going public. German vacation rental aggregator, HomeToGo, has entered an agreement to go public with Lakestar SPAC I, owned by venture capital firm Lakestar. Both companies announced the agreement together, stating they would continue exclusive negotiations to enter a “binding business combination.”

HomeToGo recently released findings with the help of AirDNA, a short-term rental data, and analytics company. The report showed that consumers are restless after over a year of dealing with the Covid crisis. This has caused an increase in ‘revenge travel,’ a trend of consumers looking to travel this summer and beyond to the U.S. 

HomeToGo is jumping at the chance to go public to best capitalize on this new trend of frenzied travelers. The report found that 63% of survey takers want a ‘quiet getaway’ in the U.S. and 9/10 travelers have searched for rural U.S. getaway destinations this year. HomeToGo also reported that 46% of its own summer bookings in the U.S. in April alone were for longer than a week. This is an 8% increase, year-over-year.

SPACs have been gaining popularity over the traditional means of going public for a while now. Recently, Sonder took the SPAC route in April, and even in Asia, the trend is growing, with Catcha Investment.

Lakestar is a good choice for HomeToGo, as it had raised $335 million in an IPO with plans to merge with a late-state European tech company. Likewise, HomeToGo holds its own, having recently raised $150 million and closed an acquisition of Tripping.com. To date, HomeToGo has raised a total of %176.7 million in funding since its launch in 2014.

So far, the proposed transaction would bring up HomeToGo’s valuation to about $1.2 billion, though that number is subject to change. Once this transaction is complete, HomeToGo’s Co-Founder and CEO, Patrick Andrae, and Co-Founder Wolfgang Heigl, would keep their current positions at the company.