SideStep

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article or section is written like an advertisement.
Please help rewrite this article from a neutral point of view.
Mark blatant advertising which would require a fundamental rewrite in order to become encyclopedic for speedy deletion, using {{db-spam}}. (December 2007)
SideStep Inc.
Type Private
Founded Palo Alto, California, USA (1999)
Headquarters Santa Clara, California, USA
Key people Rob Solomon, President & CEO
Industry Travel Metasearch
Products SideStep Travel Search Website and Downloadable Toolbar
Website www.sidestep.com

SideStep.com is a travel search company based in Santa Clara, California.

Contents

[edit] Description

SideStep is a metasearch engine for travel: it searches and consolidates results from more than 200 travel websites. The site searches more than 150,000 hotels and 600 airlines in the United States and worldwide. After acquiring TravelPost, SideStep started offering 300,000+ user-generated reviews and also has editorial travel guides through its partnership with Frommer’s and other content providers.

SideStep is one of several travel metasearch websites and is second only to Kayak.com in size, with 3 million visitors a month in the United States (September 2007, comScore ).

[edit] History

SideStep was founded in 2000, with the launch of their downloadable application (the SideStep toolbar) and launched its website in the beginning of 2005. Investors include Trident Capital, NVP and others.

In 2006, SideStep acquired TravelPost, a hotel review and user-generated content website.

[edit] Business model

SideStep makes money through advertising and referral fees. However, advertising does not bias the ranking of results in their metasearch engine—and the prices are the same as the ones found by directly searching their partner websites.

[edit] Product lines

  • Travel metasearch: SideStep’s metasearch engine finds real-time price and availability information on airfare, hotels, car rental, vacations, cruises and activities.
  • Travel guides: Editorially-written travel guides from multiple sources include travel information and research, ranging from trip planning, hotels, restaurants, shopping, etc.
  • Travel deals: Travel deals and promotions aggregated from a variety of online sources.
  • Toolbar: The original SideStep product, the toolbar can be installed on Internet Explorer 5+ browsers and lets the user do travel metasearch and compare prices alongside searches on other Web sites without having to visit SideStep.com.

[edit] Sale to Kayak

In late 2007, SideStep was sold to Kayak.com for about $180m.

[edit] External links