Gogobot Adds New Suite of Tools to its Award-Winning Social Travel Service, Including Real-Time Hotel Pricing, OpenTable and Street View Integrations

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Gogobot (www.gogobot.com), the world's leading source of trusted travel advice, announces that it is bringing even greater transparency and utility to its award-winning social travel service with the integration of the instant restaurant-booking service OpenTable; Google's 360-degree, panoramic, street-level imager Street View; and the hotel price-tracking and deal-finding tool DealAngel.

This new set of features gives Gogobot's more than 2.5 million registered in-the-know travelers even more access to travel knowledge that complements the service's personalized advice based on recommendations from friends and like-minded people. No other social travel service makes it so easy for users to research, discover, book and share their travels to more than 60,000 destinations – or just score a prized table at a hot local restaurant. The new tools on Gogobot include:

Enhanced hotel search capabilities and DealAngel integration – Since its launch, Gogobot has helped millions of travelers find the best hotels based on what is popular in their networks. Now, Gogobot simplifies and fine tunes hotel search with the launch of real-time pricing tools and an exclusive partnership with DealAngel, the innovative hotel-comparison service. The new functionality will help Gogobot users cut through the noise to get unprecedented transparency on pricing when researching a trip, with such features as:

• A DealAngel-powered calendar that helps interested travelers identify the cheapest dates to go, based on average hotel prices, and avoid dates when tradeshows or other events drive up hotel prices.
• Gogobot's integration of real-time pricing and availability data, which allows users to plug in dates to see the actual prices of hotels for when they are traveling, which saves them from wasting time researching hotels that are either booked-out or too expensive on their desired dates.
• The ability to book with a single click, without all the annoying pop-up windows common on other review sites.
• The integration of DealAngel's Deal Ranking algorithm, which provides even more transparency in pricing by helping travelers quickly identify the best deals based on expected market rates for any hotel – as well as how much they can save. The ranking of the deals, from poor to excellent, is not available anywhere else, with typical travel sites often failing to provide the fair-market price from which the customer can make a comparison. For example, if a hotel temporarily drops its price by $100 per night, Gogobot's DealAngel ranking highlights the deal to the user, so they can make a fully informed choice.

OpenTable – The go-to way for wired diners to lock in a restaurant reservation comes to Gogobot, giving users the ability to not only tap into their networks to discover the best dining choices, but the ability with a single click to book a table via a seamless integration with OpenTable to over 26,000 restaurants. Great for either planning a night on the town over a staycation or mapping out a series of memorable meals on a dream trip.

Street View – Powered by Google, this feature lets Gogobot users click the "Street View" button from a restaurant, hotel or attraction page to access a head-spinning, 360-degree view of the location. This enhances the existing Gogobot search experience for travelers – allowing them to go beyond browsing trusted reviews, photos, maps, and phone numbers – by enabling them to virtually explore a destination, check out the neighborhood around a hotel, or scope out the inside of a potential restaurant. With the Street View function, Gogobot users can get a more complete view of everything from legendary attractions (Times Square, New York City; Stonehenge, Amesbury, England) to iconic architectural achievements (Gaudi's Casa Mila in Barcelona) to a storied sandwich shop in San Francisco.

"Gogobot is striving to make the user experience as fun, practical, and comprehensive as possible for planning, sharing and booking trips," said Gogobot CEO and co-founder Travis Katz. "As a result, we've been busy adding to the Gogobot tool kit, finding more ways for the anyone to use the social travel service. Whether they want to get a street-level gander at a bar that claims to mix the best sazerac; book a table at the hip, new, slow-food restaurant; or need to feel reassured that they are scoring the absolute best deal on a boutique hotel, Gogobot can help a traveler do all that – as well as find the advice they need from users they can trust."

In recent months, Gogobot has seen the jump in its user engagement coincide with exponential growth. Gogobot's registered user base, at more than 2.5 million, has grown by 800 percent in the last 12 months alone.

Gogobot for iPhone and iPod Touch is available for free from the App Store at: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gogobot-postcards-travel-guide/id459590827?mt=8.

For more information, go to http://www.gogobot.com.

About Gogobot 
Gogobot is the world's most popular source of trusted travel advice from people like you. Launched in November 2010 and named one of Time magazine's 50 Best Websites of 2011, Gogobot was the first travel company to refocus online travel planning on friends, not strangers. By allowing people to tap into their personal networks on Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter for personal advice and recommendations, Gogobot has helped millions of people create, share and enjoy extraordinary travel experiences. As a result, Gogobot works with global partners - including Expedia, Hotels.com, Kayak and Priceline - that enable users to book their travel directly from the site. Gogobot is available on the web, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Whether you are seeking advice on the best hotels in Las Vegas, tips for visiting Walt Disney World or reviews of things to do in New York City, Gogobot offers advice you can trust from people like you.

Gogobot has raised $19 million, more funding than all other companies in the sector combined, from leading venture investors, including Battery Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Innovation Endeavors. Gogobot is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, with an office in London.

About DealAngel
DealAngel's mission is to show travelers when even the highest quality hotels are priced significantly below their expected rate.  DealAngel was founded by hotel pricing expert Roman Peskin and travel industry insider Bob Rogers using technology originally developed to help hotels optimally price their rooms, with the aim to help travelers cut through the noise and make an intelligent decision on which is the best hotel deal. DealAngel has seed funding from early-stage venture capital firms Foresight Ventures and Bright Capital. The company is based in San Francisco, with offices in Prague.

Contact for U.S.
Mark de la Vina
Consort Partners 
Email: [email protected]  
Phone: +1 415 282-4795

Contact for Europe
James Gilheany 
Speed Communications
Email: [email protected] 
Phone: +44 20 7842 3210

SOURCE Gogobot