Tripshare, an iPad application for travel planning, is joining a crowded space. But its CEO knows a little something about the industry – Bob Dana was the former employee No. 1 and first CFO of Virgin America. He once wrote the business plan and feasibility study for Sir Richard Branson in 2003. And now he’s doing a travel startup. Dana tells us the inspiration for Tripshare was based… → Read More
Superfly launched at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in 2010 with plans to become the Mint.com of travel, or more specifically, for your rewards and frequent flier miles and travel spending. Following Kayak’s lead, over time, the startup added metasearch capabilities, integrating rewards and points into the flight booking process. Its approach attracted ex-Kayak CFO Bill Smith, who began advising the… → Read More
Pintrips, a new personal travel planning startup, is today publicly entering the competitive, crowded travel space with the public debut of its online pinboard for tracking flights and prices. The service operates differently from the typical price comparison engines and aggregators, as its focus isn’t only on finding the best prices and schedules – it’s about being able to compare different… → Read More
Over 25 million Americans participate in frequent flier programs which allow them to earn airline miles through flights and credit cards. Today, Chicago-based Rocketmiles is launching a service which will allow those travelers to earn miles just by booking rooms from select hotels, which Rocketmiles serves up directly on its website, and soon, on mobile, too. → Read More
Tapulous, one of the earliest, big mobile games makers for the iPhone, made its splash with Tap Tap Revenge, the first in a series of apps where users tapped on dropping balls in time with music — a formula that proved wildly successful and eventually resulted in the company getting bought by Disney in 2010 for reportedly $50 million. Now, one of the co-founders of Tapulous, the Australian Andrew… → Read More
For many travelers, their sense of adventure is only stymied by language barriers. With its roster of offbeat activities, however, travel site Voyagin seeks to give visitors a more intimate look at five Asian countries-Japan, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. The Tokyo-based startup, which launched its site last December, plans to add more countries this year. → Read More
If you’re looking for stuff to do, in a new city or your own, there are various ways to get that info, including Yelp, Zvents, Frommer’s guides and more. Waterloo-based Rebellion Media would rather all that data was collected in a single hub, however, where travelers could get a quick look at everything they need for trip planning in a single place, based on a map-centric interface… → Read More
Sure, socially-powered recommendations or good old-fashioned serendipity can be useful tools for discovery, but, when it comes to deciding where you’re going to take the family on vacation, you’re probably not going to just throw a dart at a dartboard and wing it. You’re probably going to spend some time researching and try to make an informed, democratic decision.
If that’s the case, would you… → Read More
Singapore-based short term home rental marketplace, Travelmob is pushing steadily into the space with new features on its site. Today, it released a way for home owners to list last-minute discounts to travelers. This follows an earlier feature released last year which allowed travelers to find listings by descriptive tags. The company is yet another in the quickly crowding Airbnb-style space… → Read More
OTG, the restaurateur that made waves when it installed free access iPads in some of the world’s busiest international airport hubs last year, is improving its existing system with the deployment of a translation system that will allow it to provide translation of its restaurant menus in 13 different languages. The system is already live in test deployments at locations like Toronto’s Pearson… → Read More
Crashworks, a new Idealab-backed travel startup, is today coming out of its semi-stealth mode with a fun mobile application called Crash and accompanying website for unique, crowdsourced tourist attractions. The difference between what Crash offers compared with more robust travel guides, is that it’s not focused on recommending hotels, transportation, restaurants or bars – it’s only about the… → Read More
Having launched two years ago into an extremely crowded travel vertical, Hipmunk has carved out its own niche. The site was built out of the need for ease of travelling by its founders, and the company has done a lot of things right since then. Hipmunk has raised $20.2 million to date, and has recently launched a new Deals product, which allows people to find the best places to go based on the… → Read More
Since launching in 2010, social travel startup Gogobot has been trying to play a role in legitimizing online travel discovery, fighting the shoddy design and link farm leanings that reined in the space. Focusing on collecting and curating quality, user-generated photos and reviews for travel destinations all over the world, Gogobot set out to create the new, digital Lonely Planet — a trusted… → Read More
The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit parent organization of Wikipedia, just officially launched its twelfth official project: Wikivoyage. The new site, which was already in beta for a while and has a bit of a tumultuous history, is a free online travel guide that, just like Wikipedia, is edited collaboratively. It currently features about 50,000 articles and has attracted a core group of about… → Read More
Facing stronger competition from disruptive travel startups like Airbnb and the behemoth of Priceline/Kayak/Booking.com, Sabre-owned Travelocity is looking to up its game with extras. Today the company announced that it would launch a new concierge service, offering restaurant reservations, driving directions, tickets to local events and more. The service, it says, is free for users who book… → Read More
Over the last few years, the travel industry has begun to undergo significant change, as startups and incumbents have fought to bring the disparate parts of a highly regulated industry online. Much of the attention from consumer web businesses has focused on making travel more “social,” improving discovery and helping travelers figure out what to do at destinations of choice. Today, there’s a… → Read More
Since launching in November 2010, social travel startup Gogobot has been on a mission to remove the shoddy design and link farm tendencies from the old world of online travel discovery. Because travel research should be a visual experience, from the get-go Gogobot focused on collecting and curating quality photos from the world’s many travel destinations. → Read More
Last week, Priceline.com acquired Kayak for $1.8 billion. That’s more than twice what Google paid for ITA back in 2010. Why did Priceline make this move? And why now?
Priceline acquired Kayak for $40 a share, about $500 million in cash, $1 billion in Priceline equity, and about $300 million in stock options. Kayak got a premium price — a 29 percent premium, to be exact — from Priceline… → Read More
Airbnb took a while to roll out its international businesses — for example, officially launching Airbnb.co.uk only in February 2012, despite being around since 2008. But in a sign of how Airbnb is focused on its wider business expansion, today the company began to promote its Neighborhoods feature, announced just four days ago, across some (but not all) of Europe. Neighborhoods offers… → Read More
While the online (and social) travel space has been contracting a bit after last year’s barrage of new entrants, one of the few young companies that has been able to maintain not only a strong foothold but continuing growth has been social trip planner, Gogobot. Jumping from one million registered users in May to its current 2.5 million+ (and seeing 800 percent growth in its user base in 2012)… → Read More
Concur, a travel and expense management solutions provider, and owner of popular mobile trip planning app TripIt, is announcing today the launch of a $150 million fund called the “Concur Perfect Trip Fund,” which will be used to invest in startups focused on innovations in the travel and expense space. Specifically, Concur is looking to fund companies which could integrate with its own Concur… → Read More
After more than a decade of helping to manage the friendly skies, it seems that mobile travel assistant WorldMate is coming in for a landing at its final destination as an independent company. Carlson Waglit Travel (CWT), one of the largest travel agencies in the world, has agreed to acquire WorldMate in an all-cash deal, TechCrunch learned today. According to sources with knowledge of the deal… → Read More
A lot of mobile language software wants to be the equivalent of an automatic universal translation app, listening to spoken phrases and translating them using natural language processing and audio recognition, but we’re not there yet. Enter Mantaphrase, a startup with a vision of quick, focused conversations across languages that help travellers get exactly the info they need quickly. → Read More
Editor’s Note: Brenden Mulligan is an avid traveler and entrepreneur who created Onesheet, Webbygram, TipList, ArtistData, MorningPics, and PhotoPile. You can find him on Twitter at @mulligan.
In my opinion, the smartphone is the greatest travel tool ever created. They enable you to be in a completely foreign place, yet immediately have access to maps, directions… → Read More
Google just announced an update to its Flight Search feature that makes it easier for tablet users to search for and book travel from the couch. According to a recent study, 47 percent of all U.S. tablet owners who search for travel on their tablets also end up making purchases on the device. Starting today, travelers who use their iPads or Nexus 7s to use Flight Search will get to see this new… → Read More
The rise of online accommodation booking services like Airbnb and HomeAway has given way to a lot of attention to, and faith in, the idea of giving up your private home to total strangers. One early mover in this area, Montreal’s Luxury Retreats, is today announcing that it is also riding this wave: it has picked up $5 million in funding, led by iNovia Capital, to further build out its business. → Read More
Delta is joining American Airlines and Southwest Airlines as the third major brand to deny travel startups access to users’ frequent flyer accounts for the purpose of tracking airlines miles and rewards. Startups affected include TripIt (reportedly*), MileWise and AwardWallet (confirmed) and others. Here’s the situation in a nutshell: the airlines think your rewards data is theirs. Users think… → Read More
Native app usage has been edging just ahead of mobile web usage among U.S. smartphone owners in the last few months, but when it comes to the category of travel, mobile web use all but disappears from the map. According to figures out today from Nielsen, 95% of all mobile traffic for travel-related content comes from native mobile apps — specifically on iOS and Android platforms. Mobile web … → Read More
When I interviewed Tripbirds co-founder Ted Valentin before the social travel recommendation site’s launch in March, he told me that hotel bookings formed the core of Tripbirds’ revenue-generation model. “If we can nail hotel recommendations, you don’t have to do more to have a valuable business,” he said. Now, Tripbirds is taking this idea to heart: the social travel network is from today… → Read More
Hopper, a stealthy consumer-facing travel startup in development for nearly five years so far, has closed on a $12 million Series B round of funding to grow its team in Boston. Hootsuite, BuildDirect and Wave Accounting investor OMERS Ventures led the round, and Brightspark Ventures and Atlas Venture participated, bringing Hopper to a total raise of $22 million. What’s interesting about the… → Read More
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