Skift Take

Negotiating exclusive deals will mean everything for Secret Escapes so that travelers can keep finding value in it.

weekly_startup_fundingEach week we create a roundup of travel startups that have received or announced funding that week. The total amount raised this week was $103.5 million.

Here are four companies that announced they raised funding this week, listed in order by the highest amount raised. See previous roundups here.

>>Secret Escapes raised a $60 million Series C round from new investor Google Ventures and existing investors Index Ventures, Octopus Investments and Atlas Venture, bringing the London-based hotel flash sales site’s total funding to around $73 million.

Check out Skift’s coverage of the Google investment from earlier this week.

>>JetSmarter raised a $20 million Series B round from new investors, including members of the Saudi royal family, Shawn “Jay Z” Carter and Wanye Chang.

JetSmarter, based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is a mobile app offering instant pricing and availability for private jets worldwide and has gained access to more than 3,000 aircraft. The company plans to use the new funding for distributing new technologies to air carriers to better streamline the booking process, launch new private jet sharing services and open customer support offices in Europe, the Middle East, South America and Asia.

>>Tripping.com raised a $16 million Series B round from new investors Steadfast Venture Capital, Seven Seas Venture Partners and Enspire Capital and several existing investors, bringing the San Francisco, California-based startup’s total funding to about $27 million.

Founded as a social travel site, Tripping.com launched at the end of 2011 and is one of the largest metasearch sites for vacation home rentals with more than 5 million rentals on the site in 100,000 destinations. Founder and CEO Jen O’Neal told Skift the site now averages 2 million visitors per month and has seen its monthly traffic grow more than 2,900% during the past year.

Tripping.com recently launched partnerships with LuxuryRetreats and Booking.com, the latter giving Tripping.com users the option to book Booking.com vacation rentals directly on Tripping.com rather than getting handed off to Booking.com to complete a booking. The company has 17 full-time employees and plans to use this new funding in part to expand internationally in Asia and elsewhere.

>>Beacon raised a $7.5 million Series A round from new investors Romulus Capital and MI VenturesWestern Technology Investment.

Beacon offers travelers an all-you-can-fly subscription for private air travel in the northeastern U.S. for $2,000 per month. It is so far only operating in and around the NYC, Boston and Washington, D.C. metro areas.

smartphone

The Daily Newsletter

Our daily coverage of the global travel industry. Written by editors and analysts from across Skift’s brands.

Have a confidential tip for Skift? Get in touch

Tags: funding, vcroundup

Photo credit: Tripping is a metasearch site for vacation rentals. Tripping

Up Next

Loading next stories