Venture Capital News

Startup business traveler focused service like Blackjet, Arrow and now Surf Air are trying to reinvent the private flying model, competing on pricing+ convenience with commercial business and first class travel, minus he big airport hassels.

Oyster has great content, but will potential buyers, such as media companies or hotel sites, really be brave enough to accommodate a business that bills itself as "The Hotel Tell-All?" Many will shy away from this candor because they don't want to offend hotel partners. That being said, critics said from day one that the Oyster's premise of professional reviews was unsustainable, and so far that is turning out to be true.

BusBud intends to use the funding to expand its number of employees, and its breadth of bus-schedule coverage. "Your worldwide bus travel companion" can now get a bit more global.

Funded, lean and focused, Hipmunk can take its sweet, little time honing its product to get ready for a larger profile. Whether it ever emerges from beautiful product to major player is a very open question. There is plenty of money to be made even as a relatively small company, but Hipmunk's ambitions are huge.

With Priceline buying Kayak, Expedia investing in Trivago, and TripAdvisor launching hotel metasearch, all the big players have a piece of the pie, and this will have many delightful twists and turns.

Expect a lot more from Skift, as we add new services and accelerate our growth with this new funding.

QuickMobile has found itself a lucrative niche, and is clearly in expansion mode.

TripAdvisor's acquisition of CruiseWise is great news for TripAdvisor subsidiary Cruise Critic, which is a leading cruise news and cruise-information site, but is hampered by an outdated user interface and bulletin-like forum technology. This acqui-hire will enable TripAdvisor to finally modernize Cruise Critic, a project that's probably been on the agenda for years.

Uber is undoubtedly growing quickly and won a small victory with approval to operate in NYC, which appears to be enough work without raising a new round of funding, for now.

Frequent travelers have plenty of incentive to earn miles through Rocketmiles, but the startup will have to expand its hotel options and offer a cleaner experience than its competitor for sustainable growth.