The latest startups news, launches and more from around the travel, tourism and hospitality industry in May 2013.
Friday 31 May 2013:
- Singapore-based peer to peer car rental startup iCarsClub [TLabs here] is planning to expand its service to Beijing, China this July.
Friday 24 May 2013:- Folloyu grabs investment from Wadi Ventures. The undisclosed round for the Israel-based startup comes some two years after launch and is the company's first investment after being bootstrapped until now. Folloyu (TLabs here) allows users to transfer uncompleted activity on travel sites from one device to another (tablet, mobile, etc) and desktops.
Thursday 23 May 2013:- Utrip, a personalized travel planning platform, has added Oren Etzioni to its advisory board. The B2C site, which claims 7,000 unique visitors per month, launched a discovery feature this week.
Tuesday 21 May 2013:- TourWrist gets another investor and advisor: Philippe Bourguignon. The vice-chairman and CEO of Exclusive Resorts joins as a seed-stage investor alongside current investors Thayer Ventures and General Catalyst Partners. Bourguignon was previously president of Accor in APAC and executive vice president for the chain in North America
Monday 20 May 2013:- Flee taps up Vayant for flight search tools. The Canada-based trip recommendation engine will use the Vayant Pricing Cache to power its flight search functionality. Once a users selects a flight they are able to book it on Flee via the Travelocity white label service.
- New Zealand-based corporate travel management solution provider Serko is planning to list on the New Zealand Exchange (NZX) by floating 25% of its shares in September to raise $20 million of expansion and R&D capital.
Wednesday 15 May 2013:- Hotwire has unveiled Trip Watcher, a site alerting travellers if the price of an airfare drops. Users can track flights from the US up to a year in advance via a My Trips section on the site and have fare alerts delivered by email, Facebook or Twitter. Trip Watcher was originally a service within Hotwire but is now a standalone site.
Monday 13 May 2013:- LoveHolidays launches flight + hotel booking service. The six-month old, UK-based online travel agency startup (TLabs here) will now offer visitors the chance to pull together their own trips with separate components, as well as adding extras such as luggage and hotel transfers.
Friday 10 May 2013:- TourWrist snags Philip Wolf to join advisory board. The founder, ex-chairman and CEO of PhoCusWright will join the US-based startup almost three years on from its launch (TLabs here). Wolf has a number of other advisory (Odigeo, DataArt) and board positions (MakeMyTrip, Hopper) in the industry following the sale of his research and events business to NorthStar Travel Media in 2011.
Thursday 9 May 2013:- HotelQuickly expands into Australia. The Hong Kong-based startup that provides last minute hotel booking service says it is targeting the country specifically because so-called "intercity traveling" is an important factor in Australia.
NB:Startup image via Shutterstock.