Skift Take

In an era when we see so many copycat startups endlessly doing basically the same thing, Liftopia has blazed a (ski) trail, and brought a unique idea to an industry that sorely needed it.

Liftopia, a technology company that brings hotel-revenue management techniques to ski operations and allows users to book and pay for lift tickets at home or on mobile devices, raised $5 million in funding, with participation from current and/or former executives of Yelp, Hotwire, and Expedia.

Industry Ventures led the round, and new investors included Mark Benioff (Salesforce), Jeremy Stoppelmen (Yelp), and Spencer Rascoff (Zillow, co-founder Hotwire), Walter Winshall, ru-Net, and Thayer Ventures. Existing investors First Round Capital, Erik Blachford (former Expedia CEO), Lowercase Capital and SK Ventures (Paul Kedrosky) also chipped in.
Liftopia, which offers ski and related activities online and on mobile, has raised $7.9 million to date, and plans on using the new funding to add 25 employees, which would bring its workforce to 60 people, and to speed the development of its ski industry e-commerce technology.

Founded in 2005 by former Hotwire employees Evan Reece and Ron Schneidermann, who serve as Liftopia’s CEO and chief marketing officer, respectively, the company now counts more than 250 resorts in North America as users of its technology platform.

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Tags: funding, liftopia, ski

Photo credit: Evan Reece and Ron Schneidermann from Liftopia.com. Long Zheng / Flickr

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