112 redundancies after Airbnb support firm collapses

It’s now been revealed that 112 redundancies have followed the collapse of controversial short lets support firm Hostmaker.

The overseas operation of the firm has been sold to a rival company - Houst - as part of a pre-lack deal: this covers the former firm’s operations in France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Thailand.

But the UK side of the business has not been saved and 112 UK-based staff go.

‘While Hostmaker was providing a valued service to many of its property owners or ‘hosts’, the business suffered from severe cashflow issues at the start of this year” explains Graham Bushby, an insolvency partner at RSM Restructuring Advisory. 

“We are very pleased to have managed an accelerated sale process which has resulted in the sale of Hostmaker’s overseas operations and secured a continuity of service for some of the UK customers. However, it was not possible to rescue the UK business as a whole, and we are currently supporting staff with their applications to the Redundancy Payments Office” he adds.

He says Houst - a firm that recently changed its name from Airsorted - will be contacting relevant clients in due course.

In the past Airsorted and Hostmaker were warring rivals in the burgeoning short lets management sector. 

When it was Airsorted it described itself as “the world’s largest management company for Airbnb and more” - a claim that led to a challenge from a rival firm, Hostmaker, leading to the ban on the wording by the ASA. When it changed its name to Houst it instead called itself “the biggest player in the professional hosting space” and said it had an ambition “to be seen as an essential partner to property owners, rather than simply a service provider.”