Luxury Retreats boosts its high-end villa rental network with $5 million from iNovia Capital

Luxury Retreats, a villa rental network founded in 1999, has just raised $5 million in capital led by iNovia Capital. According to the release, funding was needed to “strengthen the company’s balance sheet” and provide additional resources to grow.

Given that this is a service that provides “personalized villa vacations” to the super-rich, we’ll forgive you if you haven’t heard much of it before. The Montreal-based company claims a portfolio of over 2,000 hand-picked villas in 50 different destinations, making it a unique service in the higher-end space.

According to Joe Poulin, Luxury Retreats’ founder and chief executive officer:

We are excited to announce this funding. Up to this point, we have been very successful in servicing our rapid internal growth by redeploying profits internally, enabling us to maintain our position as the largest luxury villa rental company in the world. This capital provides us the additional financial flexibility to pursue opportunistic investments to enhance our long-term growth plans, with our ultimate goal to remain the leading player in the global luxury rental market.

From what we can tell, Luxury Retreats has no plans to expand into other verticals, but with competition from high-end listings on Airbnb (like this Chateau), raising additional capital to hold its ground was likely a good call. Moreover, the company’s need to “strengthen [its] balance sheet” is a bit unsettling, but that’s an unclear quote which may or may not signal problems down the road.

➤ Luxury Retreats