Startups

It's great to see a startup competition in travel where contestants don't have to shell out thousands of dollars to appear.

Zozi is more Gilt Groupe than Viator, and it will be interesting to see if its gear-first, tours-and-activities-second model will work.

Rosetta Stone remains the stalwart of language learning platforms, and rather than compete by innovating internally, it’s allowing the new crop of startups to ripen and then snatching them up one by one.

Big market if it is done right, though problem would be fulfilling this cost-effectively at scale, in a standardized manner.

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.

With only about 8% of hotel bookings in Russia taking place online, Ostrovok and its peers have epic room for growth.

This is a tough sector to raise funding in, so kudos on that, and long term, SideTour's corporate/B2B business will likely be the driver of the company's revenues and future.