Top Stories
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Will Room 77′s deep pockets and strong hotel product get it a seat at the table?
DigitalDrew Patterson, who recently became Room 77′s first CEO, does a perceptible double take at the seeming absurdity of the question. “How is Room 77 going to meet the challenge of being relatively late to the party?” he’s asked. After all, the first crop of travel metasearch sites, including FareChase, SideStep and Qixo, are now [...]
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The real-world challenges for travel startups, as mirrored in Hipmunk’s story
DigitalHipmunk co-founder and CEO Adam Goldstein, 25, believes his flight and hotel metasearch company can one day be larger than Kayak, and with $20.2 million in funding and revenue that has trickled in from the moment Hipmunk debuted, he thinks he has the time to prove it. “We think we can be bigger,” Goldstein says, [...]
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Priceline completes acquisition of Kayak
DigitalPriceline completed its $1.8 billion acquisition of Kayak today, meaning Kayak ceases trading as a public company, and becomes a Priceline subsidiary. Game on. Priceline says it paid $522.4 million in cash and issued more than 1.5 million shares of common stock to pay for the right to meld the travel metasearch company into the Priceline [...]
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Travel information brand Skift raises an additional $1.1 million in seed funding
DigitalNine months ago when Skift launched, we promised a smarter worldview on travel, with a mix of news, information, and data services for professionals in the travel industry and professional travelers. Since then we have grown very fast, and Skift is now among the top sites in the travel industry. To accelerate our growth, we [...]
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QuickMobile closes $3.2 million funding round and is hiring
DigitalQuickMobile, which creates apps for meetings and events, picked up an additional $3.2 million in funding from existing investors BDC IT Venture Fund and Vancity. The Vancouver-based company, founded in 2006, intends to use the funding infusion to continue its international expansion and to add resources, including hiring an additional 20 people to bolster its [...]
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TripAdvisor acquires cruise online-booking site CruiseWise
DigitalAre cruise transactions in TripAdvisor’s future? Probably not, but TripAdvisor has acquired CruiseWise, an online cruise-booking startup that was founded in 2010. And, TripAdvisor plans on integrating CruiseWise’s tech talent and some of its content into TripAdvisor’s CruiseCritic unit, a leading cruise news and user generated content site. You can expect that a major overhaul [...]
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Uber CEO calls Reuters funding scoop “completely false”
TransportUber co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick says the startup is not raising funding, as an exclusive Reuters story published earlier today states. In response to questions from Skift requesting more details on the startup’s round of funding, Kalanick responded: The Reuters story is completely false and the product of extremely poor reporting and journalistic ethic. [...]
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Uber joins $1 billion valuation club with eBay-like growth
TransportRide-sharing service Uber is raising a new funding round at a valuation of $1 billion, according to a person familiar with the situation. If the company succeeds, it will join an elite group of start-ups that command 10-figure valuations. The situation underscores investors’ desire to pay premiums for any company they think might become the [...]
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Beijing car rental startup brings in new funding thanks to taxi-finding app
TransportBeijing-based car rental startup Yongche has been diversifying recently, launching a taxi finding app in the form of “DaChe Xiaomi”. Investors seem to be appreciating this move into a hot new niche in China – Yongche has secured a massive new round of funding this weekend, with its taxi app being a major focus of [...]
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Five travel startups hack roaming fees, restaurants and hotel bookings
DigitalInnovate, innovate, innovate is the mantra running through the minds of entrepreneurs entering the travel startup space today. It makes no difference to today’s founders whether there’s already an incumbent successfully handling their proposed problem or a tried and true solutions to their users’ most common pain points; and that’s a good thing. This week’s [...]
