Tours and activities: Still looking for breakthrough company This is part two of our three part series on the online tours and activities market, focusing on the buzz around venture-backed startups in the space. Part one here. There are only a handful of companies that matter these days in selling tours and activities, and they are a mix of old-guard established companies, a hungry wannabe, and an online travel agency making some overtures. And, although there has been venture capital money funneling into the sector, the track record has seen a paucity of success stories. “There are never any winners in the space,” one experienced travel-industry investor chimes in, dismissing the tours and activities sector. Viator’s long wait
Travel Planner Powered by Locals The Daily Muse Expands From A Community For Professional Women To “The Muse,” A Career Destination For Everyone The Daily Muse is rebranding today to serve a wider audience. The company has expanded and is going under the name The Muse now, which includes job listings, company profiles, and a career advice publication under the old name, The Daily Muse. The Daily Muse originally targeted women in their twenties and thirties, but The Muse will now offer content for all professionals. “As we grew, we began to notice something we didn’t expect: People we didn’t intend to find us, who we didn’t think would need or use our resources, came in droves,” the company wrote in a blog post today. “They were seeking the same thing we were: An answer to the question, “What do you want to do with your life?” The site, founded by ex-McKinsey analysts Kathryn Minshew, Alexandra Cavoulacos and Melissa McCreery, launched in September 2011.
Priceline’s Booking.com triples mobile booking transactions - Mobile Commerce Daily - Revenue The Booking.com Kindle Fire app Priceline’s Booking.com has seen the total transaction value of mobile hotel bookings rise from $1 billion in 2011 to more than $3 billion in 2012. In addition, more than 20 million mobile applications have been downloaded to date. 18 Sites To Help You Have An Affordable And Authentic Holiday Chelsey Pippin / BuzzFeed 1. Couchsurfing Find hosts around the world with the free and flexible Couchsurfing network. Couchsurfing focuses on cultural exchange, rather than monetary transactions and is for designed travellers and hosts who want to connect and enhance their experience in the local area.
Breather Founder Explains How On-demand Rooms Could Unlock Cities With An App [TCTV] Breather is a new startup billed as a sort of “Zipcar for rooms”. Announced at the LeWeb conference in London and due to launch later this year, it’s closed $1.5 million in funding from Canadian VC Real Ventures, along with Gary Vaynerchuk, Loic Le Meur, Mike Walsh and others. The idea is to have a network of well-kept rooms – sort of mini business lounges – which a user can unlock with a smartphone app. That’s it. The idea is to create rooms where people can chill out, rest or get work done in peace and quiet.
GetYourGuide raises $14M for tours and activities push in new markets In what could be one of the biggest investments so far in the growing online tours and activities sector, GetYourGuide has grabbed $14 million from Spark Capital and Highland Capital Partners Europe. The company says the Series A investment round will be used help with “rapid growth” into new markets. Spark has previous invested in companies such as Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare and Akamai, while Highland’s portfolio includes Lycos, MapQuest and VistaPrint. The level of investment in GYG signifies the major interest in the tours and activities segment of the industry. Previous high rounds included $7 million into US-based Zozi in May 2011.
TUI and GetYourGuide Join Forces to Revolutionize Travel Agency Distribution Press Releases TUI and GetYourGuide Join Forces to Revolutionize Travel Agency Distribution Exclusive partnership offers benefits for travel agencies and vacationers Hannover February 25th, 2013 - TUI, Germany’s leading travel agency, has added a new element to its marketing mix: an exclusive cooperation with GetYourGuide, the world’s largest online booking platform for tours, activities, and attractions around the world. This cooperation sees both partners combining their professional know-how to create a powerful marketing union. Thanks to a new technological integration with TUI’s IRIS.plus booking system, GetYourGuide’s offering of more than 18,000 products in more than 1,800 destinations will be automatically bookable in TUI travel agencies starting March 7th.
Online Activity Portal, GetYourGuide, Expands Into France, Spain and Italy With Bespoke Language Websites Press Releases Online Activity Portal, GetYourGuide, Expands Into France, Spain and Italy With Bespoke Language Websites GetYourGuide, the world’s largest online portal for tours and activities at destinations around the globe, has announced today that it is expanding into the French, Italian, and Spanish markets. Berlin February 18th, 2013 -GetYourGuide, the world’s largest online portal for tours and activities at destinations across the globe, has announced today that it is expanding into the French, Italian, and Spanish markets. This marks a major step towards further developing GetYourGuide’s position as a leader in the European tours and activities market.
Raises $14 Million Series A Round from Spark Capital and Highland Capital Partners Europe Press Releases GetYourGuide Raises $14 Million Series A Round from Spark Capital and Highland Capital Partners Europe GetYourGuide announces the closing of its $14 million Series A round of funding from Spark Capital and Highland Capital Partners Europe. Online Holiday Events Booking Platform GetYourGuide Raises $14M Series A To Internationalize Content, Zero In On Mobile Swiss startup GetYourGuide, an online booking platform for holiday tours and attractions that started life as a student project three and a half years ago, has closed a $14 million Series A funding round (as reported earlier by Der Sonntag), with investment from Spark Capital and Highland Capital Partners Europe, the newly opened European arm of Highland Capital Partners. Highland Capital Partners Europe’s General Partner Fergal Mullen and Spark Capital General Partner Alex Finkelstein will join the GetYourGuide board. Earlier this year GetYourGuide snagged a $2 million seed investment, and back in 2009 raised $500,000 pre-seed – taking its total funding to date to $16.5 million. “We are a very bootstrapped company,” CEO Johannes Reck tells TechCrunch. “We grew to quite a sizeable amount of revenue — we have more than 10,000 transactions per month — on very little money so far, purely through tech.”
An inside look at Switzerland’s seriously ambitious startup scene Ah, Switzerland. The land of chocolate, cow-bells, skiing and prices that make you want to cry. A place that has built a global brand on providing a safe, risk-free haven for other people’s money and not being disruptive or belligerent. Clean, orderly and wonderfully peaceful — yes, the clichés are true. Getyourguide.com Getyourguide.com is 5 Years, 8 Months, 6 Days old. GETYOURGUIDE.COM has rank on the internet. This rank shows site's popularity. Lower rank means more visitors that site gets. This website is estimated to get unique visitors per day. These unique visitors make pageviews.