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Investors are positioning themselves to take advantage of the proven model of travel metasearch in many of the world’s markets, as witnessed by Ctrip’s recent purchase of Skyscanner for USD 1.7 billion and Trivago’s declared plan to go on the public markets.
That trend includes the San Francisco-based Tripping.com, which said Wednesday it has raised USD 35 million in a fresh round of fundraising by a syndicate of investors, led by investment firm Princeville Global.
Tripping.com helps travelers compare the prices of up to 10 million vacation rental properties worldwide at dozens of suppliers and agencies, such as HomeAway, VRBO, TripAdvisor, and Booking.com. About 3 million of the properties can be booked instantly — up from nearly none a couple of years ago.
The Series C funding brings the company’s total outside investment to USD 52 million.
“Our goal is to double the size of the team, across product and engineering, in the next year,” co-founder Jen O’Neal tells Tnooz. “Until now we focused on building out the back-end tech, and now we want to focus on the product.”
Marketing challenge
O’Neal also wants to spend more to find new traffic sources and develop wide brand recognition. Until now, he company has relied on direct response. It will try radio, TV, and print, perhaps taking a page out of the Kayak metasearch playbook (as spelled out in the recent book “A Truck Full of Money“).
The startup’s new head of marketing — Michael Lattig, the former CMO of StubHub — has his work cut out for him. Tripping.com was recently dubbed “the largest vacation rental website you’ve never heard of” by Conde Nast Traveler.
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