TripAdvisor is in an expansive mood. In July, it acquired two small startups, VirtualTourist (user-gen travel guides) and OneTime (booking price comparison). And today it announced a majority investment in FlipKey, a guest review site for vacation home rentals. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.
FlipKey launched only last March. It covers 50,000 vacation rental properties in the U.S., which CEO TJ Mahoney says represents a $60 billion market. So it is a pretty big niche. FlipKey aims to become the reputation management system for vacation home rentals. Property owners can take review data in the form of a widget and place it on their sites or property listings. (See examples here and here).
TripAdvisor plans to include FlipKey reviews on its own network of sites, which attract 12 million visitors a month in the U.S., and 28 million worldwide, according to comScore.
Mahoney previously was a co-founder of Compete.com. Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire is an advisor to the startup. FlipKey raised $500,000 last December from angel investors, including Allaire, Care.com CEO Sheila Marcelo, and venture capitalist Nick Beim of Matrix Partners.
That’s one big company in a huge niche
you could say that again… they really have a good thing going.
Congratulations to the FlipKey team and kudos to TripAdvisor for another smart move. These guys have identified a niche opportunity and have developed a product that gets better every day. It rivals some of the big name travel sites in terms of online experience, but also covers a key part of the market that many of them neglect. I wish them much success.
Local space is exciting and starting to really heat up. In the next few years I think we will have a definite winner or some great platforms. Let keep the ball rolling.
Jippidy.com – Video Yellow Pages
when i can have my vacation, this will be my first move.
I picked Maui as an example, and none of the homes had reviews. Nice looking site, but seems to be lacking user-generated content.
The first search I tried ‘Miami’ and ‘Miami beach’ didn’t come up with any results, it doesn’t seem to know about this city, very strange…
there is a huge need for this in foreign cities where renting apartments is as equally popular getting a hotel for extended stays. Buenos Aires is one example.
ya this is big company
site is crap, what a waste.
Great logo design!
The consolidation of travel crowdsourcing is concerning. In this case Expedia, which owns TripAdvisor, is trying to buy up as much of it as they can.
ImageCo spamming. but yes it’s a nice logo.
BTW– Image Co.
You DO NOT have “GREAT” logo designs. SCRAM!
Great! I can’t wait to add it to my site! I think it will be great for people to feel more comfortable in booking a vacation rental. It’s been a long time coming — nice to see that someone has stepped up to the plate. If they are a god company to work with, word will spread through VR owners — and thus more reviews/properties will end up on the site. All in good time
Good Move…Keep catching the niche market ….Innovative….from d Qubestreet team!
Hooray,
Couldn’t happen to a better team. Really happy for TJ and Carl.
Not to nit but TJ was a co-creator on the Compete.com Site Analytics product and many other things at Compete but not a co-founder of Compete the company.
Cheers,
David
way to go guys! congrats to all of you!
This is a pretty big deal, especially if you’re VRBO. FlipKey is going after VRBO by placing a premium on trust — verified listings and guest reviews that can’t be deleted.
Their problem has been getting a critical mass of reviews, but that’s where TripAdvisor has a pretty large user base to tap into.
Orbitz also announced they are getting in the space this morning, VRBO has a couple large new competitors to worry about.
-Cameron
VROwners.com
WOW! I am one of the vacation rental companies that is part of Flip Key- my 35 cottages on Tybee Island, GA are all reveiwed on a weekly basis from my guests. I love how well this works with Flip Key- driving new business to my cottages and helping visitors feel better about the decisions they’re making based on reviews from previous guests. Thank you TJ for making this such a big boost to my business! And thank you Techcrunch.com for talking about Flip Key!
What I’m really looking for is a decent review site for campings. There’s a million sites that do this, but not one of them is really good, simple and easy to use.
VirtualTourist is not a ’small start up’ It’s about 6 million uniques a month and has been around since 2000.