Travel Search company Uptake raised $10 million
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008Travel search company Uptake.com CEO Yen Lee announced on Uptake Blog that the company has raised $10 million from Trinity Ventures in its Series B. Uptake (formerly known as Kango) now offered more accommodation and activity options for users to plan their vacations. Yen said:
“How do we plan to grow? First, we will expand our search offering beyond UpTake Hotels into new categories including: UpTake Lodging, UpTake Things to Do, UpTake Restaurants and UpTake Beaches. Second, we will improve our ability to deliver travel recommendations based on our analysis and filtering of collective intelligence and on consumers specific travel preferences. Lastly, when it makes sense, we will accelerate our growth through acquisitions.”
Since launched about one year’s ago, Uptake. com has seen traffic growth from Mar. 2008. Besides of providing collective intelligence to help users decide “where to stay” and “what to do”, Uptake has partnered with TravelMuse to offer a ”trip folder“ for users to save their selected hotels and things to do. Thus the travel planning process extends from ”search and discover” to ” save” which seems pretty cool.
Uptake also provide the search by travel preference, i.e. family friendly, pet friendly or romantic. The most recent theme is “feeling broke” which is all about “budget/cheap” hotels and things to do. If you have never consider a search start from “cheap”, try it out. “An open mind and a little creativity will stretch those dollars and extend those vacation days.”
Grigo