Type of site Travel application Industry Travel services Founded 2010 | Area served International Headquarters Menlo Park | |
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Key people Travis Katz, co-founder and CEO
Ori Zaltzman, co-founder and CTO Services Social travel planning and business review/rankings Slogan(s) "Forget tomorrow, discover something new today" Motto "Forget tomorrow, discover something new today" | ||
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Trip.com (formerly known as 'Gogobot') is a local discovery and travel research application and website headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Trip.com users can research destinations and places to go, including hotels, restaurants, bars and attractions in more than 60,000 destinations, and its users can share reviews and pictures from their own travel experiences. Forbes has referred to the company as a "social network for travelers."
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Founded in 2010, Trip.com is the fifth most visited travel-planning site in the United States.
Description
Trip.com is a travel-planning and local discovery service that is available both on the web, and via iOS and Android applications. It allows users to research hotels, restaurants, and activities at destinations around the world, reading reviews from Trip.com's community of travelers and browsing photos. Trip.com's community is organized into 19 "Tribes" that allow users to see reviews and opinions from people with similar tastes and interests. As part of the planning aspect of the application, Trip.com users can plan out itineraries, organizing them day by day and syncing them to multiple devices.
Registered users can choose to link to their to Facebook and Twitter accounts, but it is not required. Rather than searching for destinations and information, users can choose to post questions in a forum-like format in which other users can then reply and provide specific reviews or recommendations.
In September 2014, Trip.com debuted a feature called "Gogo This Week" which showcases handpicked events happening that week in large destination cities including Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York City, and London. The application is available online as well as on iOS and Android devices.
Company history
Trip.com was founded in 2010 by Ori Zaltzman and Travis Katz. Prior to founding Trip.com, Travis Katz was the senior vice president and managing director for MySpace International, and Ori Zaltzman was the lead architect for Yahoo! BOSS and lead technologist at Yahoo! Answers. Katz came up with the idea for Trip.com while working at MySpace, citing a observation of how long it took to make travel plans while noting that online trip planning lacked "personal relevance."
The company secured $4 million in its first round of venture funding from Battery Ventures. The website launched in November 2010 and Trip.com released the iOS application in October 2011. The same year the site was launched, Trip.com was awarded a Crunchie award for best design by TechCrunch.
In 2011, Trip.com announced several system integration developments with companies including Flipboard, Facebook, and Foursquare that would allow users to connect to their friends and other users through aspects of other social media platforms. In 2011, Trip.com was ranked among the top 50 websites by Time magazine., and in October, 2011, the company raised an additional $15 million in venture capital in a series B round of funding led by Redpoint Ventures.
By 2012, the Trip.com user-base had grown to over two million members within two months. After identifying that almost 44 percent of the site's users were coming from Europe, the company established a European headquarters in London in April 2012.
The Trip.com Android application was released in January 2013. Later that year, Trip.com announced their partnership with HomeAway, a vacation rental company. The partnership led to the launch of Trip.com's "Insider Guides," combining data and advice from HomeAway with Trip.com's editorial content and reviews. The company became the fastest growing travel website in 2013 achieving 3.7 million users.
In 2014, Trip.com crossed 720,000 reviews, and 4 million pictures. The company launched a redesigned mobile app in 2014 in response to users increasingly using the service for local discovery, rather than simply travel planning. The new site design also included a revamped company logo and a new "Tribes" feature that helps users filter places based on what is popular among people with similar interests such as foodies or adventure-seekers. In November, 2014, Trip.com secured an additional $20MM in venture financing, led by HomeAway with participation from Redpoint Ventures and Battery Ventures.