PRESS RELEASE: InBed.me Secures $1.2 Million in Seed Funding from International Angels and Funds to Make Travel Booking More Social

InBed.me Secures $1.2 Million in Seed Funding from International Angels and Funds to Make Travel Booking More Social

New York, February 2012. InBed.me has announced today that it has secured a Seed Round of $1.2 Million in investment to continue the development of its social booking platform for hostels travelers. The investment was made by a very international group of funds and founders from Europe, the US and South America. The funds include Ventech (Paris), Quotidian Ventures (New York), CAP Ventures (Buenos Aires) and founders such as Fabrice Grinda (OLX, Zingy), Dave Lerner (Columbia Venture Labs, Venture Studio), Roeland Boonstoppel (Amber Ventures), Alec Oxenford (OLX, DeRemate), Javier Tenessa (eDreams, ODIGEO), Justin Siegel (JSmart, JNJ Mobile) among others.

The new funding will enable inBed.me to grow the team in order to accelerate the development of the product by adding more social features, integrating with other social networks and developing the mobile app, as well as expanding their inventory of properties in South America with special focus in Brazil, and to invest in marketing to grow their base of users. InBed.me will focus in the initial stage in American young travelers traveling to South America, which is a growing destination among backpackers and young travelers.

InBed.me is a social booking platform in which users can not only book a place to stay but also see who else will be staying in each accommodation and each city during their travel dates. This way, travelers can connect, share tips and even plan activities together before the trip even starts. By connecting with Facebook, inBed.me permits to easily create a profile and start connecting with current and new friends. InBed.me focuses on hostels, bed & breakfasts and budget accommodations that appeal more to young socially oriented travelers.

“We believe that the future of e-commerce is inevitably social commerce. In the travel space no one has figured yet how social booking is going to be. Our goal is crack the code of social booking by focusing on the youth travel segment that is naturally social. The same way that Facebook took off in colleges, we expect social booking to happen first among young travelers,” inBed.me co-founder and CEO Diego Saez-Gil said. “We are a global company from day one, having an international team and investors and advisors from more than 6 different countries, which is essential for a travel company,” Saez-Gil added.

“There are more than 50,000 budget accommodations around the world and a lot of this inventory is still fragmented or not even online yet, especially in emerging destinations. Brazil with the World Cup and Olympic Games is building a lot of new accommodations. We are putting a special focus in these emerging inventory”, inBed.me co-founder and VP of Global Inventory, Chris Piazza, said.

InBed.me has secured a partnership with Hostelworld, an Irish company that is the world’s largest supplier of Hostels online. This partnership allows inBed.me to offer their users more than 25,000 properties that Hostelworld has in their inventory. InBed.me has additionally 1,200 that signed up to the site. The company has also assembled an impressive group of advisors including Viator Travel founder Rod Cuthbert. The company has Business Development offices in New York and Product Development office in Bogotá, Colombia. The company started in Startup Weekend New York; took part of Startup Chile; and participated of NXTP Labs, an Argentinian startup accelerator part of the TechStars Network, to accelerate their growth.

About inBed.me

InBed.me is the first social booking platform for socially oriented travelers, where they can book a place to stay in Hostels, Bed & Breakfasts and other fun and social accommodations, and see who else will be in each place before they book. This way, travelers can connect, share tips, and even plan activities together before the trip starts. The company was founded in 2011 and has office in Bogotá, Colombia and New York, USA. For more information go to http://inbed.me or contact chris@inbed.me.

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