No Christmas number one for Top10, the well-funded online hotel search provider, after confirming that it has closed down after four years of operations.
The UK_based startup used review scores, location and price to provide customers with a shortlist of the best ten properties in a destination.
Rates were provided mostly by online travel agencies.
CEO Tom Leathes says the company is currently being wound down. The majority of Top10's staff began leaving in November.
Leathes says:
"Launching a new business has always been difficult, and early-stage tech companies are always high risk.
Although the company did "an amazing job innovating in this tough space", Leathes claims the hotel industry is "particularly challenging given the size, reach and budgets of the big players".
"Ultimately the competitive landscape made it too expensive for us to scale, and for that reason we decided to close the company."
The company secured a Series B round of $8 million in March 2014 from a host of high profile backers.
The investment was led by Balderton Capital and included participation from existing investors Accel Partners, Forward Partners and Idealab.
Top10 launched (TLabs here) in the summer of 2011, with a founding team The founding team includes Leathes, CMO Alex Buttle and CPO Harry Jones.
The company always said it didn't itself as pure metasearch, pushing the idea that the platform was about "finding the perfect hotel at the best price" but, even back in its early days, it acknowledged the huge competition it faced from the likes of Trivago, Kayak and Skyscanner, as well as travel inspiration sites, review services and OTAs.
When asked where did he see in the three year's time, in 2013, Buttle said:
"We will have a global proposition - multi-currency, multilingual and heavily optimised to any device.
"The challenge will be scaling - growing the team and opening up new offices and territories, but we’re building our product to work globally and in any market."
Since its launch, Top10 had captured a fair amount of praise for its UEX and launched a number of initiatives such as an Instagram feed for "real-time" images of properties and a mobile app.
Leathes says:
"We’re incredibly proud of the ground-breaking products we built at Top10, and the amazing people that made it happen. Many of the team are now moving on to work with other great startups within our investors’ portfolios and beyond, and we can’t wait to see what they build next."