More investment pouring into travel startups again with news that social booking site for hostels and couches, Inbed.me, has raised $1.2 million in a seed round of funding.
The site has captured the investment from a string of organisations around the world including Ventech (Paris), Quotidian Ventures (US) and CAP Ventures (Argentina).
Others joining the round include Fabrice Grinda (OLX, Zingy), Dave Lerner (Columbia Venture Labs, Venture Studio), Roeland Boonstoppel (Amber Ventures), Alec Oxenford (OLX, DeRemate), Javier Tenessa (eDreams, ODIGEO) and Justin Siegel (JSmart, JNJ Mobile).
The company (TLabs Showcase from January this year) says it will use the round to develop other social features on the site, including integration with other networks, as well as the creation of a mobile application.
It will also expand the number of properties included on the site from South America, especially in Brazil.
Inbed.me had previously raised around $75,000 from Grinda, Ariel Arrieta (Digital Ventures) and Alex Oxenford.
Co-founder and CEO Diego Saez-Gil says:
"We believe that the future of e-commerce is inevitably social commerce. In the travel space no one has figured yet how social booking is going to be. Our goal is crack the code of social booking by focusing on the youth travel segment that is naturally social.
"The same way that Facebook took off in colleges, we expect social booking to happen first among young travelers."
The company says it will initially be targeting US travellers looking to head south, as it is one of the growing destinations for backpackers.
In the meantime, an unlikely deal with a rival hostel provider in the shape of Hostelworld has also materialised.
The Ireland-based budget accommodation service is giving its younger partner around 25,000 properties from its own system, massively increasing the amount of inventory available to visitors of InBedme.