Vacation Rental Site Tripping Secures Series A Funding

Hotel metasearch is certainly among the hottest things in travel, but would it work for vacation rentals and Airbnb-like apartment rentals?

Recruit Holdings, Quest Venture Partners, former Expedia CEO Erik Blachford, Qunar co-founder Fritz Demopoulos and other investors are betting that metasearch and alternative lodging types are a great match for metasearch as they participated in a Series A round for San Francisco-based Tripping. Tokyo-headquartered Recruit Holdings and Quest Venture Partners of Menlo Park, California, co-led the round.

Recruit Holdings, which has a portfolio of staffing and other companies in Japan, North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, also announced that the Tripping investment was its first from a newly formed 4.5 billion yen venture fund, RGIP LLC, which is aimed at expanding Recruit Holdings' global footprint.

In classic-metasearch style, a newly redesigned Tripping enables users to search for vacation rentals and short-term stays, and then complete the booking on sites such as HomeAway, Booking.com, Wimdu, Interhome, HouseTrip, Flipkey and others.

Tripping didn't reveal the amount of the Series A, but Business Insider quotes sources as saying it is in the $5-$10 million range.s

Founded in 2010, Tripping previously had around $1 million in funding, and states it offers more than 1 million vacation rental choices in some 50,000 cities through its partners.