Is Skift the new home page for the travel industry?
Skift, a new travel website aiming to bring together providers and users in the travel industry, officially launched on July 30.
The site offers travel information such as news, data, tools and services and aims to reach an audience of leisure and business travelers as well as industry experts. The new platform includes categories like 'Insights' with news on mergers, acquisitions and travel startups and 'Rooms' with info on hotels, rentals and shares. Consumers can find news on cruises, hotels and airlines as well as travel tips and new travel apps. Content on the site is either licensed (from wire services such as Reuters), software-aggregated or comes from original reporting.
The New York based startup company is founded by Rafat Ali, founder of the website paidContent and Jason Clampet, former senior online editor at Frommers.com. Ali sold paidContent to The Guardian Company back in 2008 for around $12.5million before traveling for two years.
The site is said to have raised $500,000 from investors such as former MySpace president Jason Hirschhorn and former Thomson Reuters president of media Chris Ahearn and is expecting to launch a subscription-based data in its second phase.
There have also been rumors that Wikimedia, the non-profit organization behind Wikipedia, is planning to launch a new travel site aiming to provide objective travel information. There hasn't yet been an official announcement on this, but the creation of a new travel site by the organization was reported by publications such as CNET and The Inquistr earlier this month.
