Oyster Hotel Reviews, a site that launched a few months ago, has raised $4 million in an extended Series A round of funding from Bain Capital Ventures and Accelerator Ventures. To date, the startup has raised $10.4 million in funding.
The site provides consumers with qualified professional reviews of hotels around the world, hoping to compete with the likes of Frommers, Fodors, Conde Nast Traveler and others. Oyster aims to differentiate itself from the plethora of other travel review sites by offering longer, more magazine-like reviews that are written by a staff of full-time journalists who actually travel to each hotel reviewed.
The online travel industry is a competitive landscape, with TripAdvisor, Fodors, Frommers and TripKick all vying for traffic. But Oyster has received a good amount of positive press since its launch and has raised a fair amount of funding in a tumultuous economic environment, so it may be able to survive in the space. The advantage that Oyster has in terms of content is a team of experienced travel journalists who write detailed and informative reviews that seem to be unbiased. And as the site adds more locations and perhaps more verticals, it should gain a loyal following.
leena roa is hot and should s*ck it all night
I can’t believe sites are still getting such high valuations in this market…well, good for them anyway.
Its only about hotels in “Aruba, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, and Miami”?
I think Tripadvisor has it more or less taken. They have alot of reviews already which is what people look for. They already have great placing in search engines .
I think Tripadvisor will be hard to beat
Very Nice interface. But I am afraid they won’t be able to scale
I agree with John B. Even thought the website looks very nice and easy to use. I don’t see how you can scale this business forward. It will take ages to reach the level of information TripAdvisor has accumulated in the last 10 years or so. I know Oyster doesn’t consider TA as a competitor but consumers don’t really care that much whether reviews are written by professionals or consumers. I find fascinating that people can still think there is room for another B2C review site. But apparently I am wrong since VCs like Bain and Accelerator think it’s worth investing $4M into this business. I mean there is some much more innovation we could do in the travel space to make it better for the consumer to transact online…
wow
Like Guillaume I am amazed that Oyster has managed to raise $4 million dollars. On their site they state they are not making any money at present but are building up their reviews. Well that $4 million is going to have to be repaid with interest.
Is there really a market for professional hotel reviews, even professional writers are human. you could argue that frequent hotel guests have as much experience to write “fair and honest” reviews.