Paris-based TVtrip has scored €7 million (nearly $9 million) in venture capital funding on top of its previous $4.8 million Series A round, bringing the total of capital invested in the company up to a healthy $13.8 million (excluding the undisclosed angel funding the company raised to get started). Previous investors Balderton Capital and Partech International participated in the second round and were joined by AGF Private Equity this time.
TVtrip is essentially a guide for hotels from around the globe, but centered around video reviews and enhanced with third-party reviews from sites like HotelClub and Venere. Visitors are offered unbiased, professionally produced video reviews for hotels and get to book straight away through affiliate partnerships with booking sites.
So far, the guide covers 157 destinations and 2900 hotels worldwide, and has built up a directory of about 9800 videos.
The service’s main selling point in my opinion is the rich video player, which lets you jump to different rooms from one and the same hotel, offers a direct booking link, lets you view the location on a map inside the interface, switch to a photo gallery, etc.
Ever since TVtrip launched, I’ve been wondering why they didn’t offer a way for people to embed / share videos. I used to think TVtrip simply wanted to position itself as the premier destination site for video reviews for hotels, without the option to share its content on other places, but I was wrong. Co-founder and CMO Marc Pfohl tells me they did actually share embedding functionality on demand, and that they will be opening up more when they launch their next version, due March 10. The reason it took so long, he says, is because they wanted to be able to track where the videos appear with great detail.
TVtrip was founded by 4 ex-managers of Expedia Europe and backed by former Expedia CEO. The startup faces competition from (the equally French) Trivop, Tripr.tv, Travelmedia, Hotelly and Travelistic.
Robin,
I think you missed out their main competitor Travelmedia who supply video and destination content for the main tour operators across Europe.
Added
Congrats to the team, we love good news, one of our http://tinyurl.com/2cvfbj customers just sold of a smiliar company to one of the biggest media companies in germany – BURDA – FOCUS
There is also Hotelly.com tha has been live since October 08.
How many of these are we going to have??
Isn’t hotel reviews market saturated already?
There are lots
I think adding video to hotel accommodations is very powerful. However I prefer user generated video reviews like hotelvideoreviews.com.
Robin,
I would like to submit our site as a competitor site as well – http://www.hotelly.com. However our hotel video acquisition strategy is different from others. We sources the videos from the web (youTube), hotels, users and third party content vendors. In addition we aggregate the best prices and reviews from the web.
Regards
Added.
The major chains are shooting their own videos and major travel content distributors are jumping into the game. In 24 months every OTA will have video available. So, help me out here. How do you make VC style returns here?
Michael,
Many major hotel chains do use our services for producing and distributing video content. Stay tuned for more news.
TVtrip is currently building a truly unique global catalogue of professional hotel videos in the main 100 key city destinations. The increasing traffic on our sites leads us to believe that users like the idea of unbiased professional videos when they need to book a room. Videos that are produced by the hotels are often perceived by the users to be too commercial and sales oriented.
Like you said, there are certainly other vendors doing a great job out there to establish video as a “must have” in the online travel industry.
Marc @ TVtrip
Video is the future and specifically video yellow pages that essentially what we are banking on. But with respect to VC style return, I think whatever format ultimately wins will generate a lot in terms of revs.
I clearly doubt hotels are aware about the fact they need videos on their websites:
better conversion rates and something unique OTAs ot TVtrip hotel websites should not own…
More direct bookings i.e more unique content.
Hotels should really take care when they sign contracts with these kind of new intermediaries
Though there’s several competitors they’ll have to overcome in this market, if they play their cards right, they’re sure to succeed. Video reviews, especially if they allow customer video reviews are being a huge hit. There’s just something about hearing it from a real person instead of just from marketing teams.
I just read of this today, great news.. I like their service a lot.
Andy
http://www.aberdeenjobs.org.uk
A local up and comer in this arena is TravelSavyyMom – they have sponsorship from Flip Video and have moms around the world producing unbiased reviews plus videos on hotels and other vacation properties
Wow. Nice way to secure more funding. Competition is still relatively low for rich media plus travel market. There is another one that is flying below the radar. Epictrip.com’s hotel video section is showing higher traffic than the 5 sites combined:
http://www.epic...d-virtual-tours
Their videos would be way better if they removed the cheesy elevator music and had someone actually talking about the hotel.
Been using tvtrip for a while now. I think some of the music tracks on their videos are really good. Much better than having a lame voice-over.
Yakoozo Hotel Video Guide UK has just finished there early testing stage and is now in the process of upgrading there site.
We will be offering professionally produced informative video for travelers and hotels aswell as customer video review uploads. Hotels will also be able to simply implement there videos on there own websites via our pro-links.
Happy days…