Aspiration travel startup Peek launched a little more than a year ago to offer interesting activities for travelers. Since then it’s expanded to 19 different locations and signed up thousands of activity vendors. But it’s looking to scale up even faster with $5 million in new funding led by Todd Kimmel and Montage Ventures.
Peek seeks to set itself apart from other travel sites by actually providing a variety of activities that can be booked online or through its recently released iPhone app. It provides real-time inventory of events and manages payment processing and scheduling, simplifying the process of connecting travellers and vendors.
With the new funding, Peek plans to expand into new destinations while also adding new activities in existing markets and launching its consumer-facing platform on more platforms. It also hopes to extend more features through its back-end merchant platform, Peek Professional.
That platform is part of the reason for its success. Operators are able to manage bookings that come in through Peek’s website while also providing an embeddable widget that they can put on their own websites. On the back end they can update schedules and tours, while Peek also provides mobile tools for managing their business on the go.
Since most vendors don’t even have websites, Peek Professional helps to bridge the world of offline activities with online bookings. Now with 25 employees, Peek is head down and looking to quickly ramp up the number of locations and activities available.
In addition to Kimmel and Montage, the financing round includes investment from Orbitz and HotelTonight board member Brad Gerstner, as well as StubHub co-founder Jeff Fluhr. Other investors in the startup include Jack Dorsey, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, SV Angel, and Khosla Ventures. Peek has raised a total of $6.5 million to date.