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

GateGuru attracted $500,000 in new funding from new and existing investors as it’s poised to embark on its first monetization effort — using real-time pricing and bookings from a car-rental company as users amble through an airport.

The monetary infusion, which brings GateGuru’s total funding to $1.3 million, comes from new investors, including Dave Morgan (Simulmedia), and existing investors such as Chamath Palihapitiya (ex-Facebook), Tom Glocer (formerly at Thomson Reuters), and Thomas Lehrman (Gerson Lehrman Group). There are nearly two dozen investors.

GateGuru founder Dan Gellert says its apps, which cover airports, their restaurants and shops, as well as flight arrival and departure information, will be revamped within two months, beginning with version 3.0 of the iOS app, to provide a “seamless airport experience.”

In other words, you input your flight number into the app and GateGuru will serve up all the information — flight status and security line wait times etc, — instead of travelers having to dig out that information for themselves.

“Over the last 10 years, the TSA, airports and airlines have added a lot of stress and anxiety to the airport experience,” and the app relaunch will provide the traveler with everything they need to know over the next four to six hours, Gellert says.

With the app revamp will come an exclusive agreement with a car rental company, providing real-time and dynamic pricing and booking as travelers wander through the airport, he says.

Cars present a “unique opportunity,” Gellert says, as car rental firms need new ways to digitally market themselves to travelers, who happen to open the GateGuru apps “in airports more than any other place.”

Gellert says the car-rental functionality will roll out domestically at first and then go international.

 Disclosure: Tom Glocer, an investor in GateGuru, is an investor in Skift as well.