UpTake Networks announced today that it acquired RealTravel.com, a social hotel recommendation site. With the purchase, terms of which were not disclosed, UpTake aims to “accelerate their investment in the online travel research experience and drive more free, qualified leads back to travel sites”.

UpTake already operates UpTake.com, a semantic search engine designed to help travelers research and decide where to go, stay and what to do.

Yen Lee, co-founder of UpTake, explains the decision to buy Real Travel thusly:

“We acquired Real Travel because their product vision and approach are similar to UpTake.com, they have a highly talented team and they have a global footprint covering more than 200 countries.”

UpTake, which was formerly known as Kango and changed its name to UpTake Networks in March 2008, says it intends to continue to operate RealTravel.com as an independent site.

UpTake was initially founded in 2006 and is based in Palo Alto, California. The company has raised $14 million to date.

According to its CrunchBase profile, Real Travel has raised $1.8 million (from Mike Maples and Reid Hoffman, among others), although it appears some funding rounds are missing in the database. The fact that the latest press release to be published on Real Travel’s site dates back to July 2007 doesn’t help, of course.

Crunchbase

• UPTAKE
• REALTRAVEL

Company: Uptake

Website: uptake.com

Launch Date: 2008

Funding: $14M

Uptake is a social travel site helps you decide what to do on your ideal vacation by giving you advice and recommendations from the largest online travel library and the people you trust most. Uptake enables consumers to tap into their preferred source of expertise and recommendations – friends and trusted experts who have been there –to create the perfect trip. Uptake has also built a foundation of the largest structured travel library in the U.S., which offers a...

Learn more

Company: RealTravel

Website: realtravel.com

Funding: $1.8M

RealTravel is a place for people to find and share travel advice and experiences. They site has very deep travel content - mostly written by users, and some from a recent partnership with Frommer’s. The site has an active community of tens of thousands of frequent travelers who talk about their experiences and freely give their recommendations via blogs, forums, photos, etc.

Learn more