Coming out of beta four months ago, San Francisco start-up GetGoing has elicited buzz because of its unique opaque booking product for vacation packages: “pick two, get one.”
Today the San Francisco company adds traditional hotel booking to its menu of options — with an inventory of 140,000 hotels in 150 countries from Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN). It will mimick Hotels.com’s highly successful book-10-hotels-get-a-tenth-stay-free loyalty rewards concept.
The start-up, which has 35 full-time employees, is a graduate of the Y Combinator accelerator program and has received about $5 million in funding. In April it added ordinary flight booking.
We spoke with CEO Alek Vernitsky about the changes: “We integrated the historical weather for your dates of travel, to spare users from having to click over to Weather.com. The forecast is right there at the top of the search results. We have smarter Facebook relevance. We provide two metrics: How many of your Facebook friends live there and how many of your Facebook friends have been there. While some other sites tell you if your friends have been to a place, travelers often want to know whom they might be able to visit while they’re in town.”
