DealBase.com, an online database devoted to aggregating hotel deals and packages, has secured $1 million in Series A funding from angel investors including Russ Siegelman, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Bob Zipp, managing director of Amicus Capital; and Josh Hannah, general partner at Matrix Partners and former CEO of eHow.com.

Launched in November 2008, DealBase crawls the web to create a database of hotel deals, special offers and packages, which currently number more than 22,000 deals, from over 3,500 sources, adding up to $4,660,093 in total savings on the site. The online travel industry is a competitive market chock full of sites that find consumer deals for travel, which makes the popularity contest incredibly tough. Expedia, Kayak, Travelzoo and others all offer packages and deals through their platforms and have a dedicated user base.

What makes DealBase’s site slightly more unique is its “Deal Analyzer” functionality that compares deal prices to regular prices, and then rates the deal for travelers so they can determine if they’re getting a good deal or not. Sam Shank, founder of DealBase, says that 15 percent of deals on the site have negative savings. But Microsoft-owned Farecast, a travel site focused in finding deals for hotels and air travel, also has a feature that measures how well-priced the hotel is compared to its original pricing and other hotels. The main difference is that Farecast doesn’t limit its search to just deals and packages while DealBase only lists deals and special promotions for hotels.

Shank also maintains that since DealBase lets any hotels post advertisements for free, with no advertising deals, the process is transparent and hotels have more of an incentive in the current economy to post a deal for free. Currently, DealBase features over 500 deals for New York City Hotels while Travelzoo lists only 7 deals. Expedia also features nearly 500 deals for hotels in New York. If DealBase’s database has the same reach and information of more established sites like Expedia, that could be a good sign.

Shank’s previous startup, TravelPost, was one of the larger hotel review sites in the US and was acquired by SideStep, a comprehensive travel deal search engine. SideStep was then acquired by competitor Kayak in December 2007 for $180 million.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Event tickets are a big business and startup FanSnap is entering the game with a compelling ticket search engine. FanSnap is launching the public beta of its nifty Kayak-like live ticket search engine for sports, concerts, and theater events. FanSnap, through partnerships, provides free ticket search results for close to 60 of the leading ticket providers, including StubHub, eBay, Ace Tickets, AllShows.com, Barry’s Tickets,Gold Coast Tickets, Las Vegas Tickets, RazorGator and TicketNetwork. The results include more than 12 million tickets to 40,000 events.

FanSnap’s technology makes finding tickets to an event very simple. The site allows fans to see ticket selection and price ranges at-a-glance. FanSnap uses sliders to allow filter to see tickets by price range, date, time, number of tickets available, and by the series of the event (baseball homestand, a multi-night concert performance, or a week of Broadway shows). Users get a comprehensive list of comparable ticket offers from multiple providers. The search results also make it easy for users to see the full price of a ticket on a ticket vendor’s site, including all taxes, commissions, and fees that may come with a ticket. Similar to Kayak, when a user clicks on a desired ticket, he or she is taken to the vendor’s page.

Here’s the really cool part. Next to the search results, FanSnap has an interactive map of the event venue, which includes a “best value” feature that highlights at-a-glance those ticket offers that are priced significantly lower than surrounding offers. The value of the tickets are color-coded, with yellow being the lowest price and dark red being the highest price. The available tickets are distributed over the venue map, with the “best value” tickets as determined by FanSnap’s technology (the best tickets for the lowest price) represented by stars.

But that’s not all. FanSnap’s map then lets users zoom into a row-level view of the available seats map (only created for around 200 of the top venues of the U.S, but will be rolled out to more venues in the future), to see exactly where the desired seats are versus the rest of the stadium or event space. FanSnap says that they plan on including actual “views from the seat,” a photo from the actual seat, in the future (they already have a partnership with seating chart site SeatData to create this feature). Competitor SeatKarma already offers such court-view photos.

FanSnap is led by some pretty experienced people in the online tickets and search aggregation industries. CEO and co-founder Mike Janes used to be StubHub’s chief marketing officer. Steve Hafner and Paul English, co-founders of Kayak, are on the board of advisers. Co-founder Rishi Garg was the director of strategy and business development for MTV Networks. And FanSnap received $10.5 million in Series A funding from General Catalyst Partners, which is also one of the primary investors in Kayak.

Janes says FanSnap’s biggest competitor is Google, since many consumers will type in the name of a desired event to Google’s massive search engine. But FanSnap, he says, solves the problem of filtering the legitimate tickets from the fake ones, and also provides real-time data. Other competitors include event ticket aggregator TicketStumbler, but FanSnap appears to have more ticket vendors (and thus reach), more interactive images and more features.

FanSnap’s search engine is disarmingly good. Not only is it comprehensive, but FanSnap’s focus on visuals and images makes it really easy for users to see exactly what they are getting both in terms of value and location of a seat. Ticket selling is a dynamic industry—consumers often get ripped off or are charged unwanted fees. FanSnap adds transparency to the market by making side-by-side comparisons of fees vendors are tacking onto the value of a ticket. And FanSnap says that it fully vets each ticket vendor to ensure legitimacy and customer service.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Publicly traded travel site Travelzoo has launched the beta version of its new comprehensive airfare search engine, Fly.com. At first glance, Fly.com is a Kayak-look alike (except that Fly.com searches are limited to airfares only). The two sites offer virtually the same search options, except that Fly.com’s price comparison sites are limited to Priceline and Hotwire, whereas Kayak offers comparison searches on Priceline, Hotwire, Expedia, Travelocity and Airfare.com

What differentiates Fly.com from Kayak is the way in which a user can see the listed flight information. Fly.com includes a summary view, where each airline’s lowest and highest prices is listed. The user can then click on the airline to see the flight times and ranges. Also, the user can see the economy, business and first-class prices in one search. And Fly.com’s results include “Why Me?” boxes, which inform travelers about amenities on a specific route or airline. For example, a “Why Me?” box attached to Virgin Airlines informs the user about Virgin’s in-flight entertainment options. While some of these may be innovative, it’s doubtful that these differentiators will be enough to drive people away from a more comprehensive site, like Kayak, where a user can also search for rental cars, hotels and package vacations. That said, Fly.com does seem to have at least a few advantages – for one the site lists American Airlines flight options, whereas the airline company ditched its listings on Kayak. Update: American actually returned to Kayak in October.

Travelzoo created buzz around its $1.8 million purchase of the domain “Fly.com” in January. Undoubtedly, Fly.com is a highly desirable domain name, but history has dictated that success does not necessarily correlate with a good name (just take a look at the Pets.com fiasco). Hopefully, Fly.com can figure out a way to truly stand out in the sea of travel search engines.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

As Lehman Brothers sells off its assets following its bankruptcy, there is still a big question as to what will happen to its venture arm and, more importantly, how any change in ownership will affect the companies in which Lehman Brothers Venture Partners holds a stake. Like many investment banks, Lehman got into venture investing in the mid-1990s to try to capture some of those venture returns. The investment management group that it was a part of was sold off to Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman on Monday, but the venture arm was not part of that sale. Instead, Lehman Brothers Venture Partners is trying to spin itself off as a separate venture firm with about $800 million in assets.

But if it cannot do that, it will either go to hungry creditors or a financial buyer who may be more interested in liquidating the fund than in nurturing the startups in its portfolio. Those startups include Kayak, SearchMe, Jaxtr, Endeca, and about 80 more. (A partial list from CrunchBase is below. Other than comScore, most are still private).  They could wake up tomorrow and find that they have a new shareholder who is even more impatient for a quick exit than its existing ones.  It’s like being an orphan and wondering who your next foster parents will be. That can really mess with a startup’s development.

And this scenario may not be limited to Lehman Brothers. As other investment banks rethink whether they should be in the venture business, many more startups could find themselves with new shareholders. What if Goldman Sach, Morgan Stanley, or JPMorgan decide to get out of the venture business as well?

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Airlines don’t like the booking sites because they have to pay them a referral fee for every ticket they sell, as opposed to capturing the full fare when travelers book on their individual sites. Even though that only amounts to a few dollars per ticket, every dollar counts to the troubled airlines—especially now with fuel prices going sky-high and the consumer spending going down.

American Airlines has a particular beef with Kayak because it tends to show AA flights through its partnership with Orbitz instead of directly from American. That means American has to pay a double tax, once to Kayak and once to Orbitz. (The deal between Kayak and Orbitz, charges the competing CEO, was meant to drive up traffic numbers on Kayak as it was potentially seeking an IPO prior to raising $200 million instead last December).

The decision to sever ties with Kayak supposedly has already been made. The only question is whether Orbitz can salvage its relationship with the airline. This should strengthen competing travel sites, especially newer ones that link directly to the airlines like Mobissimo and Yapta.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

It’s also clear even from a cursory comparison of the two sites that Mobissimo is trying harder than Kayak to help you find exactly the flight and hotel you are looking for. Kayak is largely similar to other travel search sites – enter where you want to go and get back results from a number of providers, sort by price, etc.

But Mobissimo has implemented a number of just plain smart features that provide the kind of travel options that you usually need a human operator or travel agent to get to. In addition to normal search results, for example, users also see options for the lowest priced non-stop fares, the lowest priced alternative dates, and the lowest priced business class fares (without doing new searches). And if there’s a train between the two destinations, Mobissimo will show those results along with the flights – you may get there faster and cheaper that way, and you’d never think to search for train schedules separately.

And even better, the service will look for related destinations and show you the lowest fares there, too. For example, a search for flights to Poland may show other Eastern European destinations if the prices are a lot lower. Or if you are looking for flights to an airport near a beach, Mobissimo will show you other flights to other beach destinations, perhaps thousands of miles away (and skiing, and wine regions, etc.). It’s very hard to find these kinds of travel options with online searches. If you are flying to Warsaw, you just don’t think to do a search to Prague, too, to see if it’s vastly cheaper.

And if all you want to do is find a quick getaway to gamble, play golf, drink wine, go to a beach or just about anything else, you can search primarily by activity, too. Mobissimo also has widgets on the site that pull in third party information about the destination. Weather, Flickr photos and (soon) travel guides are included in the left sidebar.

All of this isn’t to say that Mobissimo has more traffic or sales than Kayak – see the Comscore chart here for their relative sizes. But Mobissimo is a solid, profitable startup with a great user experience. And they’ve done it with next to no financial resources.

The company was founded by Beatrice Tarka in October 2003.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Farecast, which launched in May 2006, tries to predict flight price changes for consumers so they know whether to buy now or wait. In late 2006 they added guarantees, effectively allowing consumers to buy insurance policies against price increases in the event they decide to wait. More recently, Farecast added hotel bookings as well.

The site now offers predictions for over 200 markets between U.S. cities and Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean and Canada. According to USA Today, travelers can search for international trips up to two weeks long and six months out and Farecast will predict whether fares will go up, down or hold steady over the next week.

The new extended service still has limitations, for example a search for San Francisco International (SFO) to London Heathrow (LHR) offers airfares, but doesn’t provide a prediction service despite LHR being a major gateway into Europe, where as SFO to Mexico City now does. Farecast can be used in a similar fashion to general travel sites such as Expedia as a general airfare and booking service; a search for Melbourne (MLB) to SFO gave similar results to the SFO-LHW search, although despite Farecast providing price comparison links to sites including Expedia, there was no price advantage at all over the other sites.

Farecast operates in a highly competitive space, more so since Kayak acquired Sidestep in December. Farecast’s traffic has trended up over the long term, but it is still lagging in third place (see comScore chart below).

(thx to Mark Douglass for the tip)

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Yen Lee, the CEO of travel search startup Kango and a former general manager of Yahoo Travel, noticed the change and offered this analysis on Kango’s blog:

It seems like just yesterday that the travel sector crowned Kayak the undisputed heavyweight champion of price comparison search following their acquisition of SideStep. But wait! It looks like Yahoo has (finally!) unveiled FareChase, the price search engine they acquired back in 2004. On the Yahoo Travel homepage, the Travelocity booking engine is no longer the default search option, it has been re-labeled ‘classic search’ and FareChase is the default search.

. . . Presumably this brings a new competitive element that Kayak might not have expected (let’s be serious, four years after the acquisition, did ANYONE expect Yahoo to finally launch FareChase?).

Sounds like the move surprised him. That Travelocity deal must have been pretty lucrative, even if it was from another era. Could Yahoo be sacrificing short-term profits for the bigger game of maintaining and capturing market share?

Lee also notes that Yahoo searches more travel sites than Kayak, which could help it ferret out better prices. Of course, as a tangential competitor to Kayak (although Kango is more about travel planning than pricing), it is in his interest to point out new threats to its business.

Regardless, it may now be Yahoo that is facing the threat. According to comScore, the combined traffic to the Kayak and Sidestep networks in December in the U.S. was 6.3 million individuals, which is within striking distance of Yahoo Travel’s 7.3 million. Price shopping is perhaps the main draw to any travel site, so Yahoo has to step up its game to maintain its lead position.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

This is a two part deal. Kayak raised $196 million in a new round of financing from their existing investors (Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Accel Partners), two of SideStep’s existing investors (Norwest Venture Partners and Trident Capital), new investors (Oak Investment Partners and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners) and debt lenders (Silicon Valley Bank and Gold Hill Capital). Prior to this new round, Kayak had raised $27 million in capital.

Kayak subsequently acquired SideStep. Terms are not being disclosed, but we are hearing that the deal was for $180 million in cash. An additional $20 million that SideStep holds in cash is being distributed as well, making the total deal size around $200 million.

SideStep and Kayak are the two leaders in the discount travel search space (along with Mobissimo and Farecast). Kayak is reportedly doing around $50 million in yearly revenues, compared to SideStep’s $35 million.

This marks quite a turnaround for SideStep. Two years ago the company was on the ropes. Founding CEO Brian Barth had been ousted. Rob Solomon, previously Yahoo’s SVP Commerce, joined as CEO and replaced 40 of the company’s 50 or so employees. In the last two years he grew the company from $14 million to $35 million in revenue, and turned it profitable. SideStep has raised $32 million in venture capital.

Twenty or so of SideStep’s seventy five employees will stay on at Kayak over the long run. Rob Solomon and a few others will remain for a sixty day transition period and will then be back on the market.

Update 1: Worldwide Comscore numbers for the four companies are below. Kayak says that there is less than 10% overlap between SideStep and Kayak users.

Update 2: I just spoke to the Kayak and Sidestep executive teams for a more complete briefing. The combined company will have 60ish employees once the merger is completed and the 60 day transition period ends. The company is very profitable on the combined revenues. In addition to affiliate fee from sales, SideStep does a large display advertising and email marketing business, which Kayak lacks. Total ticket sales for Kayak are around $2.5 billion/year. SideStep is around $1 billion.

Funny quote from the press release: Kayak’s CTO and cofounder Paul English says “As a native Bostonian, I am also personally gratified to finally see an East Coast technology firm purchasing a West Coast counterpart.” Kayak is Connecticut based; SideStep is in Silicon Valley.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0