Ostrovok.ru, the Moscow-based hotel booking service, just raised a triple funding boost from three of the most respected names in online travel. Erik Blachfold, CEO of Expedia, Hotwire and Tripit founder Gregg Brockway and Altimeter Capital’s Brad Gerstner all agreed to invest in the travel company.
Travel is a hot industry to invest in and Ostrovok earned the title of Russia’s fastest growing travel company. Launched in October 2010, the booking service quickly piqued the interest of some of the most experienced investors around, including Esther Dyson, General Catalyst Partners, Accel Partners, Atomico Ventures and the Founders Fund.
With this additional round of funding the company will without a doubt grow to yet another level. The investors preferred not to disclose their individual amounts of investment. Ostrovok did however disclose that the new investments bring their overall amount of funding raised to a rather impressive USD 13.5 million.
“Far from being mature, travel continues to be one of the most dynamic industries around, particularly in a rapidly growing emerging market like Russia,” Gregg Brockway commented in the press release.
The market has shown enormous growth indeed, and European travellers continue to shift to online channels. Only last month travel industry research company PhoCusWright released a report predicting a continuing double-digit growth in the European online travel market throughout 2012.
Ostrovok announced to use the funds to build out their engineering team. The company currently employs a team of about 100 people based in their Moscow offices. The booking service now holds a database of over 130,000 hotels in 200 countries.