Tripping.com has raised $16 million in Series B financing. The company also hit an inventory record of more than 5 million property listings.
Steadfast Venture Capital, an early-stage investment firm in New York City, led the round.
Another key investor participating is former Expedia CEO Erik Blachford. This is notable because Blachford has been heavily involved in the turnaround attempt of Couchsurfing, the peer-to-peer platform, as executive chairman.
While it hasn't disclosed all of its funding, the San Francisco startup is thought to have raised $6 million in the rounds prior to this one.
Pivot to win it
Launched in 2010, Tripping originally had a focus on homestays. But Jen O’Neal, its CEO and founder, soon switched to a more viable revenue model of becoming a metasearch for vacation and short-term home rentals worldwide, with suppliers like HomeAway, HouseTrip, Flipkey, Interhome, and Booking.com.
Aggregation worked. Tripping now claims that it is the world’s largest and fastest-growing vacation rental search engine.
Since a year ago, the vacation rental search engine says it has had a 2,918% increase in traffic, saying today that it averages more than 2 million unique monthly visitors now.
It also says it has had a 2,390% increase in monthly revenues in the past year, though it didn't disclose off of what dollar base.
Other investors include 7 Seas Venture Partners, Enspire Capital, Azure Capital, Fritz Demopoulos (founder of travel metasearch giant Qunar), Monte Koch, Drew Goldman, Brendan Wallace, and Shawntae Spencer.
See Tnooz's original 2010 profile of Tripping.