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Travel Venture Capital News

Startups

UK’s Kabbee raises a multi-million dollar round for another solution to cab-hailing

Social travel planning sites are officially so last year. In their place we now have taxi-related tech startups that promise to make cab hailing so much better.

Short-Term Rentals

Luxury Retreats takes $5 million in funding for expanding villa rentals

Lots of new players moving into this upscale private rentals market, including NextGreatPlace, Portico Club and Inspirato. Luxury Retreat probably saw the opportunity as everyone else is bulking up with large fundings as well.

Airlines

Routehappy attracts $1.5 million in funding for flight amenities search engine

RouteHappy is bringing a level of data about flight amenties to masses of passengers that until now only the most avid aviation geeks would have been aware of. RouteHappy's challenge is to see how much consumers really care about flight amenities as they vary aircraft to aircraft.

Routehappy attracts $1.5 million in funding for flight amenities search engine

Airlines

GateGuru picks up $500k in new funding to go broader than airport info

Car rentals seem a natural fit for GateGuru as its mobile fans work their ways through the airport. Hotels would be a no-brainer, too.

GateGuru picks up $500k in new funding to go broader than airport info

Hotels

Investors bet $15 million more on CouchSurfing’s sharing economy

If Airbnb- and CouchSurfing-type accommodations cause concern about their legalities and risks, these issues are not dissuading important investors.

Investors bet $15 million more on CouchSurfing’s sharing economy

Online Travel

Consumer travel mega-site-in-waiting Hopper raises $12 million more second round

Destination discovery/planning tool is a startup minefield & few have cracked it. Hopper's goal of using Big Data to catalogue travel flight and destination data is ambitious & admirable, though they're taken a lot of time and money for it.

Online Travel

NextGreatPlace vacation membership club secures $3.5 million in funding

NextGreatPlace hopes to be the next great vacation club, but as in other trendy endeavors, it will have to prove that the model works.

Online Travel

Carpooling.com gets $10 million from Daimler to expand into the U.S.

Car sharing services face their biggest challenges from gaining legitimacy from wary consumers as well as major players, such as the insurance industry. Backing from a car manufacturer goes a long way towards improving the odds on both of those.

Hotels

Hotel reputation software firm Revinate gets $14.5M funding round

Good competition in the space from likes of ReviewPro, TrustYou & others and then generalist social media tools, this money will surely be needed to scale/compete. Rich Barton gold dust helps too.

Online Travel

Photo startups bloat: Everpix trying with $1 million funding to manage your photo bloat

Real need to manage photo bloat, lots of startups trying that, see Techcrunch's own "photo" tag for the bloat in the startupland. Jetpac is a travel industry native, and trying something similar in the vertical.