TripRental.com, a startup focusing on vacation rental market has secured Series A funding of $500,000 from private investors including William Vaughn Moore. TripRental is planning to fuel this investment capital to expand their sales team across the country (US), expand product development, increase traffic to the website, provide high quality content on site and marketing efforts.

TripRental launched its operation in the US in 2011, with technology development center in Mumbai, India.

One of the investors Mr Moore is the President of AIT Worldwide Logistics and a 17-year logistics industry veteran. He also serves on the advisory board of TripRental.

Mr Moore says,

“I am excited to invest in a company with a fresh advertising idea for the vacation rental industry, and looking forward to watching and sharing in its growth and success. It was an easy decision for me to expand my investment in TripRental.com and I am pleased to lead the Series A investment.”

TripRental offers (as of now) its services in seven destinations: US, Europe, Mexico, Costa Rica, Caribbean, Bahamas and Canada.

Vacation Rental market is clearly growing positive. At one point (when Airbnb emerged), Vacation Rental market was completely untapped. Now in 2013, VR market has become extremely crowded.

There are numerous VR based startups that mushroomed in last 3-4 years, the good news is – majority of the VR players are funded. Irrespective of these developments, VR market is still not exhausted, there is STILL scope for new startups. Globally, the VR market is dominated by players like Airbnb, VRBO, HomeAway, Rentalo.

Startups in VR space that got funded in last September/ October include,

• HouseTrip, London based VR startup that raised $40 Million in their Series C funding led by Accel Partners

• Luxury Retreats, Montreal based VR startup raised $5 Million led by iNovia Capital

• MyVR, San Francisco based startup raised $1.4 Million seed round from SV Angel (a re-up from YCombinator) and participation from a number of angels, including Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon; YC partner and father of Gmail, Paul Buchheit; Hotwire President Clem Bason; Tenaya Capital’s Ben Boyer; TrialPay co-founder and CEO Alex Rampell and others