Startups

The startup's focus on mobile and social media distribution gives them a leg up on the country's outdated domestic tourism industry, which up until recently was dominated by a few big companies.

If Airbnb- and CouchSurfing-type accommodations cause concern about their legalities and risks, these issues are not dissuading important investors.

Hipmunk has a lot of funding in the kitty. With Kourosh Karimkhany's hiring, perhaps a little M&A activity is in the cards?

Hopper is doing heavy lifting in amassing data to spur travel inspiration. Five years in the making already, it needs to deliver out of the gate, or become an expensive road kill.

Destination discovery/planning tool is a startup minefield & few have cracked it. Hopper's goal of using Big Data to catalogue travel flight and destination data is ambitious & admirable, though they're taken a lot of time and money for it.

Verbalizeit’s crowd-sourced translators are paid for their time, ensuring that travelers and business relying on the service for affordable and accessible translations will have help whenever it’s needed.

NextGreatPlace hopes to be the next great vacation club, but as in other trendy endeavors, it will have to prove that the model works.

Trover's team realized early on that people were neither planning itineraries nor connecting with frieds, so it switched to a Pinterest-like model that trades on inspiration rather than organization.

It's tough going for any social site that wants to focus on connection users with friends or even friends of friends who are traveling.

Car sharing services face their biggest challenges from gaining legitimacy from wary consumers as well as major players, such as the insurance industry. Backing from a car manufacturer goes a long way towards improving the odds on both of those.