Wyndham Vacation Rentals-owned Danish arm Novasol has acquired Spanish apartment rental firm Friendly Rentals.
The Friendly Rentals brand will be maintained and be added to the current Novasol portfolio.
Daily operations of Friendly Rentals including management and employees will continue as usual.
The Barcelona-based business mainly focuses on city rentals with a portfolio of around 2,000 apartments in 23 cities across central and southern Europe.
City stays are estimated to comprise about one fifth of global tourism.
Novasol projects significant growth potential within the urban accommodation sector in the coming years, with Friendly Rentals becoming available to book in the UK.
Novasol UK general manager, Malcolm Hoad, said: “With this acquisition Novasol sets an important footprint within the rental market for city apartments; we see it as a strategic supplement to our current product portfolio which primarily consists of cottages.
“Friendly Rentals has a proven concept and a broad and diverse customer base that complements Novasol’s well. Together we can offer our customers accommodations both during their main holiday and shorter stays in urban metropolis.
“As we see trends in customer behaviour to take shorter vacations and travel longer distances, the Friendly Rentals portfolio expands our ability to offer unique accommodations in authentic surroundings – including a city stay.”
Friendly Rentals founder and chief executive, Pablo Zubicaray continues to head the business, which has 65 employees.
He said: “Friendly Rentals has played an active role in the market for renting city apartments for more than 13 years.
“Joining forces with Novasol, one of the largest vacation rental companies in Europe, gives new options and growth possibilities for our well-tested and proven business model. It also gives us more possibilities to offer better service to our apartment owners as well as to guests.”
Novasol handles 1.5 million holidaymakers a year across a range of brands which now have 42,000 units of accommodation under contract across 29 countries in Europe.