The Plum Guide launches in New York, LA, Rome and Milan

Holiday home platform The Plum Guide has launched in four new international markets after expanding its collection to Paris at the start of 2018. The expansion follows a 700% increase in growth last year and a £6m investment package from Octopus Ventures, BGF and LocalGlobe.

Set up to combat the lack of objective quality control in the homestay market, The Plum Guide ranks potential holiday homes with the Plum Test, the world’s most exhaustive hospitality test. The test is at the heart of Plum’s review system, designed to guarantee a perfect stay and provide Plum’s expert in-house ‘MatchMaking’ team with 500 data points to match each guest to their dream home. Only 1 in 100 homes are selected to feature in The Plum Guide’s ultimate collection of the world’s best holiday homes.

“This is just the beginning of our global story. We’re thrilled to be expanding to these four new cities this summer. As destinations with culturally rich calendars and huge visitor numbers, the accommodation options are almost endless, but there’s no effective filter to make the booking experience less arduous – and less risky”, explains founder Doron Meyassed.

“People looking for the right home spend days trawling through listing sites and trying to read between the lines of emotionally-driven hyper positive or hyper negative customer reviews. There is a clear need for an independent arbiter in this space,”

Will Smith, Plum Guide’s Head of New Markets, adds “95% of homes on Airbnb have a 4.5 stars or higher, but quality varies massively in reality. Given that these cities have such a huge number of listings, deciphering between ‘ok’ and ‘excellent’ is a real headache for anyone. That’s what we’re setting out to solve”.

View the latest collection of The Plum Guide’s homes at www.plumguide.com