Daytime hotel booking platform, Dayuse.com has closed a EUR15 million Series A investment round, in what is the largest European startup series A investment round of 2015.
The Paris-based company, which enables people to book a hotel room for a few hours during the daytime, has taken investment from renowned venture capital firms Idinvest Partners and Partech Ventures, with contributions from the startup's historical angel investors Paul Dubrule (Co-founder, Accor Group), Cédric Barbier (Founder, Lesjeudis.com) and Charles Petruccelli (Former President, American Express Travel).

The capital raised will fund three major initiatives: hire new talents, sustain the exponential growth in countries where Dayuse.com is already established, and take its international expansion to new continents.
Dayuse.com, a new player of the on-demand economy, is disrupting a previously untapped market: reserving hotel rooms during the day.
With 70 per cent of hotel rooms empty during the daytime, Dayuse.com enables hotels to sell their unoccupied rooms at discounted rates. This unique approach has created an additional revenue stream to the traditional hospitality model and generated new practices for travellers in transit, business trips, ‘daycations’, interviews, photo-shoots and special events such as girls' days out, bachelorette parties or anniversaries. 

In a sector that has been disrupted by collaborative economy players like Airbnb and HomeAway, Dayuse.com is bringing value back to hoteliers by creating a complementary offering to overnight stays and increasing hotels' revenue by 10%. This will enable the traditional hospitality industry to reclaim the lost market shares.

With more than 320,000 hotel rooms booked across the world since its launch, the online reservation platform has won over the trust of hotels and consumers
The Seed funding round closed a few months earlier in 2015 allowed the company to open a subsidiary in the United States and set up a team in Brazil.

This latest amount will be used to meet the demand of an accelerated growth in established markets, launch extensive marketing campaigns and to expand Dayuse.com's service to new continents in order to make it accessible in Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, Australia and Argentina.

To support this expansion, 35 new employees will be hired across the Paris and New York offices, as part of Dayuse.com's goal is to double its staff in 2016.
"These additional investments are a key step for Dayuse.com. We are proud to welcome such renowned venture capitalist founds to our capital, and to see the trust of our historical investors renewed,” says David Lebée – CEO at Dayuse.com. “This hyper-growth phase is part of a controlled development plan that involves hiring new talents and expanding to new territories. The goal is to institutionalise Dayuse.com at an international level with the support of our partners. Together, our commitment to go further, faster, has no limits."
Benoist Grossmann, Managing Partner at Idinvest Partners, says: “We are proud to invest into a startup developing a French expertise and with a business model giving it the outlook of becoming an international leader in its field. Furthermore, we are thrilled to join dayuse.com's capital side to side with two renowned experts of the hospitality industry: Paul Dubrule and Charles Petruccelli.”
