About Us
HouseTrip was founded in 2009 by Arnaud Bertrand and Junjun Chen. Arnaud and Junjun met whilst studying hospitality management at the acclaimed Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland.
The HouseTrip concept was born as a result of a mutual love of staying in holiday rentals while travelling. The trigger event occurred whilst trying to book a rental for a weekend in Scotland, with a booking process that was so complicated that they decided to dedicate themselves to making it simpler. Their thinking was; “since rentals are better value and more ‘authentic’ than hotels, if it’s easier and safer to book rentals, more people will choose them over hotels.” Given HouseTrip’s early success, this has so far held true!
Arnaud and Junjun rapidly managed to convince investors of their idea and to gather the early HouseTrip team. They built the website and launched it in January 2010. Thousands of owners added their rentals during that year and close to 20,000 guests stayed in these properties, writing post-stay reviews that were positive in more than 90% of cases. The HouseTrip story had started and, as you say, the rest is history…
HouseTrip.com was founded in 2009, by Arnaud Bertrand and Junjun Chen. HouseTrip.com has received funding from Index Ventures, Balderton Capital and Accel Partners, three of the leading Venture Capitalist companies. In its first year, HouseTrip.com was awarded the CTI startup label of the year and VentureKick awards, for its innovative and groundbreaking approach to holiday rentals.
Arnaud Bertrand
Chief Executive Officer & co-founder
Arnaud founded HouseTrip.com in 2009, and has served as Chief Executive Officer since the company’s inception. He holds a Bsc in Hospitality Management from Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne, Switzerland. He won the Venture Leaders competition in 2009, and is a regular speaker in the media and at Universities across Europe.
Junjun Chen
Chief Financial Officer & co-founder
Junjun co-founded HouseTrip.com in 2009, and has served as Chief Financial Officer since the company’s inception. She holds a Bsc in Hospitality Management from Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne, Switzerland.
George Hadjigeorgiou
Chief Business Officer
George is the Chief Business Officer of Housetrip where he oversees all the commercial activities of the company. Before joining Housetrip, George was the founder and CEO of GoldenGroup and COO of XE.gr. Prior to that, George worked for Yahoo! in Europe initially in the Corporate Development team and then as General Manager of Communication and Community Products. Earlier in his career, George worked as a strategy consultant for Accenture. George holds a bachelor degree in Mechanical Engineering/Economics from Tufts University and a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.
David Norris
Chief Operating Officer
David has served as Chief Operating Officer since March 2011. Previously, he was Chief Operating Officer at Livebookings (2007-2011) and before that was Website and eCommerce Operations Director at Expedia.co.uk. He has 20 years experience in the travel industry and has worked in eCommerce since 2000 including management roles at lastminute.com, Online Travel Corporation, ifyouski.com, Simply Travel (now part of TUI) and Eurocamp (Holidaybreak PLC). He is a graduate of The University of Manchester.
Stephan Wiesener
Chief Technology Officer & co-founder
Stephan co-founded HouseTrip in 2009 as Interim-CTO and Consultant to the founders’ team. He came back as full-time CTO in August 2011. Previously he was co-founder and CTO of conject AG, a Software-Company that supports the whole lifecycle of real-estates over the Internet. Before that he was Manager in the Accenture Technology Practice. Stephan has a Master in Computer Science and Economics and holds a PhD in Computer Science.
London
5th & 6th Floor, Corinthian House
279 Tottenham Court Road
London, W1T 7RJ
United Kingdom
HouseTrip HQ
rue Marterey 5
1005 Lausanne
Switzerland
Lisbon
Rua Joaquim António de Aguiar, n.66 7º
1070-153 Lisboa
Portugal