Articles tagged “room 77”

How long will it be before we talk about travel websites as always having an essential, if limited place, in much the same way that we sometimes talk about print guidebooks? Smartphones with bigger screens, tablets of mini and maximum dimensions ... buckle your seatbelts.

Altimeter Capital's new venture capital fund won't be exclusively devoted to travel startups, but expect to see it making news along the lines of Concur's larger Perfect Trip Fund, which indeed concentrates on travel.

As one of Google AdWords' best customers, of course Priceline knows what it's talking about when it cautions potential competitors about the limited effectiveness of SEO, SEM, or any other search- or advertising-dependent ways travel booking sites get their traffic

Travel metasearch in the U.S. is already a crowded field with Kayak, Room 77, and Hipmunk vying for eyeballs, and recently TripAdvisor got into the game, too. Don't be surprised if there are mergers/consolidation over the next few years, although nothing appears imminent.

Ask anyone who the most successful investor in travel is, and they'll talk about Joel Cutler of General Catalyst Partners. But, when it comes to individual investors, this gang of five has a lot of experience and is pretty good. None are infallible, of course, but this is where a lot of the smart money is.

Online travel "supermarkets" Travelocity and Expedia years ago looked like winners, but hotel "specialist" Booking.com prevailed, Room 77 argues. And, it's betting that a singular focus on hotels will one day enable Room 77 to out-Kayak Kayak. It's a huge hill to climb.

The role of quality management in a company's success tends to get downplayed, but Room 77 is looking for a rock star to lead it toward the next stage in its development.

Once derided by many in the travel industry, travel metasearch has come of age and is viewed by Expedia, Priceline and others as a necessary weapon in an assault on global growth. Expedia is hedging its bets and playing the field with Trivago and Room 77.

Travel companies should fine-tune their cloud strategies after an Amazon Web Services outage took down Room 77, Pinterest, Instagram and Netflix. Given the cost-savings and efficiencies of cloud computing, travel companies won't be abandoning such services -- nor should they -- any time soon.