InBed.me is a social network for couch-surfers, raises $1.2M

Social network for cheap travel accommodation, InBed.me has raised $1.2 million from TA Venture. The site connects travels with hostels, and people willing to rent out spare beds and couches to travelers. It also acts as a social network, so you can make friends with the person sleeping above you in a hostel bunk bed. The full press release is below.

TA Venture, together with a group of international angel investors, has invested in InBed.me, a social booking site for travelers, completing $1.2 million dollars round. The investment raised will be used to grow the business in targeted geographical regions.

InBed.me allows travelers to connect with each other while booking their Hostels or Bed & Couches for their next trip, from the web or mobile. The company is targeting the budget travel market, specifically students and young people who use hostels as their main accommodation while travelling. Users can see who will stay in each place before they book, check out their profiles and even connect with them before their trip begins, making the travel experience more social, starting from the booking stage. As a result, users can get to know each other online, share their recommendations and travelling plans before they arrive.

Since its launch November 2011, the company has built an inventory of +2,000 hostels and the number of users is growing at a fast pace. As part of its expansion, the company established a partnership with Hostelworld.com, who is the global market leader in booking hostels online. The partnership will make it possible to integrate the Hostelworld’s inventory into InBed.me system, which will allow users to book beds in some 25,000 hostels around the world. The monetization model is through booking commissions.

At present, the company is focusing on South America because it’s a popular destination among students and young travelers and because its sees a great opportunity to grow the business during the Football World Cup in Brazil in 2014. After that, the company is planning to expand into Europe.

“InBed.me is the first social market place for hostels and Bed & Couches. The company is making online travel planning more social, by allowing users to know in advance who will be visiting the same destination at the same time so that they could coordinate their travels. As a result, users get more personalized social experience during their travels. We are very exited about our investment in InBed.me and are confident that the company will become the global leader in social bookings for hostels and Bed & Couches”, said ViktoriyaTigipko, Managing Director of TA Venture.

“The idea for InBed.me came after we, the founders, traveled as backpackers in Europe. We discovered that the best part of the travel experience was connecting with other people, so we thought that we could use the social technologies in the web to facilitate these connections” said Diego Saez-Gil, Co-founder and CEO of inBed.me. He added “We are very happy to have partnered with amazing investors like TA Venture that believe in our vision, and that will be a strategic partner in our expansion in Europe and Eastern Europe in particular”.