Airbnb’s Saudi Arabian rival is gearing up for an initial public offering.
Gathern, the Riyadh-based vacation rental company positioning itself as a Middle Eastern version of the popular short-term rental platform, is looking at a Saudi IPO in 2028, Bloomberg reported.
The announcement comes after the firm secured $72 million in Series B funding. The round closed last month and included investments from companies like Sanabil Investments and Saudi Technology Ventures.
The financial injection will do more than just help the vacation rental portion of Gathern’s business get off the ground.
The company is eyeing expanding beyond accommodations and providing other travel services like car rentals, flights and curated experiences starting next year. The Series B funding will also enable the company to expand internationally, first spreading its wings in Kuwait and Bahrain before moving on to other countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Saudi Arabia has been propping up the tourism and hospitality industries as some of the nation’s biggest economic drivers, so Gathern’s growth comes at a seemingly perfect time.
The government itself is working to play a part in this growth, supporting initiatives to increase inventory of hotel rooms and other accommodation options throughout the country.
The goal is to grow hospitality and tourism’s contribution to the nation’s gross domestic product to 10 percent by 2030. That would mark a doubling of last year’s GDP. In 2024, approximately 115 million tourists visited Saudi Arabia either domestically or from abroad.
By the beginning of the next decade, the kingdom hopes for the number to grow to 150 million. The FIFA World Cup, set to take place in the country in 2034, will likely be a catalyst for further tourism expansion in the next decade.
Gathern was founded in 2016 and claims 44 percent of the alternative hospitality market share in the kingdom, according to Bloomberg. The firm reportedly boasts more than 72,000 properties and five million users. The company first turned a profit in 2023 and reached 100 percent revenue growth last year.
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