“Seraya Snags $1.8M to Disrupt Dubai’s Luxury Serviced Apartment Scene”

If you've been keeping an eye on Dubai’s buzzing hospitality space—like many of us at Arageek do—there's a new player in town worth watching. Seraya, a young startup on a mission to reinvent high-end serviced accommodation, has just bagged $1.8 million in seed investment. That brings their total raised to a tidy $2.15 million, with a solid mix of equity and debt behind the deal.

So, who’s backing them? The lion’s share of this round came thanks to a big-name family office from Saudi Arabia, along with DLL, a well-known German family office. They weren’t alone, though—several strategic angels also threw their weight in, suggesting wider confidence in Seraya’s approach. And if you ask me, that’s a decent stamp of approval, given Dubai’s notoriously cut-throat hospitality sector.

Now, don’t mistake Seraya for just another listings aggregator or a fancy letting agent with a posh logo. Since launching in October 2024, they’ve operated with a tightly controlled, vertically integrated model. They sign up for long-term leases—think five years or more—on high-end flats in prime locations like Business Bay, Downtown, and the Marina. Then they go the whole hog: stripping places down, fitting them out from top to bottom, right through to day-to-day guest management. I reckon that sort of hands-on approach—rolling up their sleeves instead of outsourcing half the job—has helped them bag an impressive 92%+ occupancy rate and perfect guest reviews so far. Not too shabby, eh?

Seraya’s co-founder, Pepijn Haima, summed it up quite neatly: they're aiming to deliver a consistent, considered experience for the ‘modern traveller’. “Our model gives us total control, from the materials we use to the experience we deliver,” Haima pointed out. That’s a philosophy close to my own heart, to be honest, since at Arageek we’re always rooting for businesses that actually care about their details rather than simply chasing growth for growth’s sake.

What really stands out is the speed and level of control: Seraya says they can turn around newly-leased apartments and get them guest-ready in just 10 days from receiving the keys. Everything from renovations to custom furniture is handled in-house—they even manufacture their own sofas and tables locally, so each property has that spot-on, unified look. It’s definitely a far cry from getting stuck with a mismatched sofa or a lumpy mattress, as so often happens with short-term lets. I’ve had a few experiences myself that were, well… a bit of a faff.

On the health and wellness side, Seraya isn’t just playing lip service either. The apartments come with thoughtful touches—think in-room saunas and water filtration—that tap into the giant, and rapidly growing, wellness travel sector. “Guests should leave feeling better than when they came,” Haima said, which some might call ambitious, but to my mind, it’s a breath of fresh air in a market where generic stays are two a penny.

Digging into their growth plans, Seraya’s in full-on expansion mode, adding one new flat every week with a target to reach 50 units by the end of next year. Upcoming launches on the Palm, Dubai Creek, and a few coveted villa communities are on the cards—precisely the sort of areas where discerning visitors want to stay. With Dubai’s short-term rental scene projected to leap from 20,000 to more than 30,000 units this year alone, the timing might just be spot on.

Jakob Langen from DLL, one of their investors, commented that Seraya’s ‘high-margin model’ and tight control over every detail gives them a big leg up over traditional players. On the flip side, it does mean it’s a huge commitment—there's not much wiggle room for mistakes when you’re doing it all yourself.

Co-founder Ibrahim Shami highlighted Dubai as the perfect battleground to try out their ideas. The city’s hospitality competition is fierce, and the fact that Seraya has managed to carve out a recognisable identity so quickly says something about both their execution and the appetite for higher quality. Personally, I think the wider region could definately use more of this sort of innovation—there’s only so much mileage you can get out of cookie-cutter hotels or random serviced flats with no personality.

All in all, as demand for curated, wellness-inspired travel continues to rise, Seraya looks to be positioning itself as a benchmark for premium accommodation in the region. Whether they can keep that same attention to detail while scaling up remains to be seen, but for now, they’re turning plenty of heads—and for good reason.

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