SideStep, the travel search engine, has raised $15 million in a third round of funding to help it stay competitive and to venture into other areas.
The travel industry is packed. Other players offer search. But they also make money from selling travel tickets, something SideStep doesn’t do. These companies include Expedia, Travelocity. There’s Kayak, which offers a similar search engine. There are niche sites too, such as fare-prediction site Farecast and user-generated site, RealTravel.
Sidestep’s funding comes from Norwest Venture Partners, and continues an incestuous trend among venture firms and the travel companies they support. Besides the Santa Clara, Calif.-based SideStep, Norwest has backed Indian tavel company Yatra, and Sulekha, another Indian company that has travel features among other things.
Sidestep is probably happy to take the money, even if it knows the danger of having a VC with conflicts. It learned its lesson back in 2004, when it held several meetings with venture firm General Catalyst, during which Sidestep spilled its business strategy to the firm, only to see the firm back out and invest in competitor Kayak instead.
And then there’s Accel, which has invested in Kosmix, a search engine that has a travel component, and Kayak.
Other investors in Sidestep include Trident Capital, Leader Ventures and Saints Capital.
In a statement, Sidestep said it wants to use the money build out media and user-generated offerings. Sidestep offers a comparison-shopping Web site, with options from more than 600 airlines, 150,000 hotels and 30,000 car rental locations worldwide. It offers vacation packages and, — via its purchase of TravelPost.com — extensive hotel reviews and travel blogs. It has more than five million users a month.
Also, we shouldn’t forget that Jamis McNiven, owner of the famous VC breakfast hangout, Bucks Restaurant, is launching his own travel company, Landfrog, this quarter.
8 Comments
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kunnst said:
Take also a look to this startup that has a very good search engine - http://www.trabber.com
Regards.
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Clarum said:
http://www.trabber.com is lame! It could not find me a r/t NY to SF flight!!! Go Sidestep.
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Scott Lawton said:
Sidestep is much less useful than Kayak, e.g. the latter does a superb job of alternate airports. (I have nothing to do with either company, but compared these and other sites for a trip I booked a few weeks ago.)
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Dave Smith said:
Ah, but Kayak lies wioth its results: often the prices they advertise cannot be booked. They trick you at the first page and then screw you on the next. Sidestep is 100% realtime, what you see is what you (can) get.
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Poole said:
Sidestep is better than Kayak. It does a more thorough search, and often comes up with cheaper fares. Also, I recently became a user on a dope new site; Matadortravel.com, they do affiliate travel booking through Travelgrove.com, which never beats the Sidestep (or Kayak) Prices.
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moris said:
I prefer to use easytravelinc.net for my travels. I frequently see “international” deals much cheaper here than the other major websites.
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James said:
We have launched a travel classifieds site called Step Up Travel, which is a travel classifieds directory and a private network for socially-minded travelers. This is for adventurous travelers who want off the beaten path and for those who want to connect directly with locals.
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James said:
sorry. site is http://www.stepuptravel.org
