In just six months since its public beta launch in May of this year, UpTake’s travel search and discovery engine has grown exponentially.

The travel industry’s deepest and broadest data base of hotels and attractions has surpassed all other online travel search engines in terms of indexed sources, products, and opinions. With this announcement, significant new industry partnerships and $10 million in new funding secured, UpTake is thriving and growing in an economy in which many start-ups are struggling.
Since its public beta in May 2008, UpTake’s search engine has increased its total number of indexed sources from 1,000 to 5,000 making its database of individual travel sites nearly 10 times greater than any other travel search engine. The sources indexed by UpTake include trusted sites like Expedia, Fodor’s, goCityKids, TripAdvisor, Virtual Tourist and Yahoo!Travel.

UpTake’s rich database now delivers summary information about more than775,000 U.S. products including 600,000 U.S. attractions and more than175,000 U.S. accommodations, including B&Bs, resorts and campgrounds. UpTake’s search recommendations are based on the aggregation of more than20 million opinions from across 5,000 web sites, an unmatched breadth of understanding.

Founded by Yen Lee, former general manager of Yahoo! Travel, UpTake was developed to be complementary to existing travel sites by providing relevant summaries to travelers and offering direct links to travel sites for complete results. In this way, UpTake is complementary to its partners– their products get discovered, while travelers can find vacation information more easily. Using UpTake, travelers are able to make better decisions because it delivers personalized results relevant to their desired trip.

Since its inception, UpTake forged strategic partnerships with some of the most respected names in the travel industry, including Fodor’s, BedandBreakfast.com, Restaurantica.com, OpenTable, La Quinta Inn & Suites and FriendCommunications, as well as recent relationships with Yelp and EpicTrip. By working with UpTake, partners can maximize the exposure of their products by providing the most up-to-date content for search engine visitors.

UpTake will be participating in the Travel Innovation Summit at the PhoCusWright Conference on Monday, November 17 in Hollywood, Calif. UpTake was selected by PhoCusWright’s experienced analyst team to showcase itsinnovative travel search engine. Yen Lee will present an overview and demonstration of UpTake, illustrating the impact its service will have onthe future of travel planning.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 16th, 2008 at 12:09 am and is filed under Alts, News, Updates, Verticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.