Peek.com launched on October 11 in San Francisco as a start-up that aims to serve all of a traveler’s needs. The service wants to make planning a trip much easier by offering all travel related services in one location including bookings, tours, hotels, restaurants and other essential.
Ruzwana Bashir, co-founder of Peek.com, says that on average vacationers spend seven hours planning their trip. This includes visiting about 20 websites, perusing through guidebooks, and using their personal network for information. Bashir goes on to say that even though the leisure travel market in the US is close to $26 billion per year there are not many centralized places where information and tools are easily available.
The startup wants to fill the currently existing gap and has convinced heavy hitting investors like Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, Google’s Eric Schmidt, SV Angel, and Khosla Ventures to invest in the idea. Peek.com now has $1.4 million in funds and has started offering services for California and Hawaii with 500 different destinations available in its database.
Peek.com is not just about making bookings for hotels and restaurants. It also offers an impressive amount of information in the form of suggested things to do. For example, the site features Top 10 lists of things to do for each city in the states that it has just launched in thus far. There are further categories of things to do based around interests like food and wine; arts and culture; adventures and sights. There is even a “Perfect Day” that has been created by a well known local.
Most of the site’s revenue is being generated from the booking side of the business. According to the co-founder, the company takes a 15 percent to 30 percent cut on each booking. Peek.com wants to differentiate itself from competitors by offering a wide variety of bookings and information in one place as opposed to just bookings for flights or hotels.
Source: CNET
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