Peek.com Raises $5 Million In New Funding
Amid stiff competition, travel startup Peek.com launched just over a year ago to offer unique vacation opportunities to travelers. Since then, the budding site has expanded to feature 19 different locations with thousands of independent merchants offering activities and tours.
On Wednesday, Peek announced that it plan to continue with efforts to scale its platform thanks to an additional $5 million in capital. The funds were contributed by several bigwig venture capitalists and tech gurus, among them Todd Kimmel of Mortgage Ventures, Brad Gerstner of Altamira Capital, and Jeff Flurh of StubHub.
These investors and their contributions will join the likes of Eric Schmidt of Google and Jack Dorsey of Twitter, both of whom reinvested in this recent round.
Peek.com sees itself operating as a combination travel agent and tour guide by making it easier for travelers to find local attractions and helping merchants reach more customers.
The platform operates similar to that of Opentable, the service that helps restaurants book vacant dinner reservations. “What we saw is that the industry was really offline and fragmented,” Peek CEO Ruzwana Bashir told the NY Times. “What we wanted to do is invest in a bunch of tours and bring the industry online.”
Peek currently features activities in 17 cities in the United States, in addition to Paris and London. With the $5 million investment, Peek plans to expand into 10 more locations over the course of the next year, one of which will be Mexico.
