Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Farecast Debuts Hotels Search Feature

Seattle-based travel search site Farecast.com revealed Wednesday that it has launched the beta version of a hotel search service. The Seattle-based company said its customers can now shop for airline tickets and hotel rooms from the same Web site. Farecast Hotels includes a new hotel-pricing technology which the firm is calling Hotel Rate Key that helps users determine whether current hotel rates are a fair deal. Similar to the firm's airfare tracking technology, the new hotel search feature will make pricing predictions based on the historical rates at hotels; the company said that the initial beta version analyzes the historical rates of more than 5,000 hotels in 30 major U.S. cities for up to 90 days in the future. Farecast is backed by Sutter Hill Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, Greylock Partners, PAR Capital Management, Pinnacle Ventures and WRF Capital.