Technology

Peek, a U.S. startup aiming to digitize the travel activities industry, has pulled a$23 million Series B round of financing and uncorked a partnership with Google that will help increase its visibility.

Founded in 2012 byRuzwana Bashir (CEO) and Oskar Bruening (CTO), the San Francisco-based startup describes itself as &OpenTable for the activities market& in that it aims to make booking activities as seamless and straightforward as a restaurant or even a flight.

Peek raised $10 million two years ago, and this new round is led byCathay Innovation with participation from existing backers that include ex-Yelp COOGeoff Donaker, Kayak founderPaul English, I2BF and Manta Ray. Peek has plenty of well-known angel backers, includingPete Flint — founder of Trulia and NFX — former Google executive chairmanEric Schmidt and Twitter CEOJack Dorsey. This new round takes it to $40 million from investors to date.

In addition to the money, the startup has announced a tie-up with Google that will see its inventory added toGoogle Search, Google Maps and Google Trips. Thatsure to help visibility and spike bookings, and it adds to other partnerships that Peek has struck with platforms that include Yelp.

Peek is taking aim at the global activities market which Bashir estimates is worth some $150 billion, with the U.S. being the most lucrative market on the planet.

&It hasn&t gone through the analog-to-digital transition like other industries,& she told TechCrunch in an interview. &So we&re building the infrastructure and software that emerged in other industries ten years ago.&

Peekbusiness model is similar to two well-funded Asian companies, Klook — which has raised over $90 million from the likes of Sequoia China and Goldman Sachs — and KKDay, which was recently backed byJapanese travel giant H.I.S.. Despite that, Bashir said that the problem of digitizing the space isn&t just limited to Asia or emerging markets.

&When you look at businesses in the U.S., over 70 percent don&t have real-time online booking, you still have to call the business or email them,& she explained.

Thatan important point, and it underlines the approach that Peek has taken. Unlike its Asia-based rivals, the company has a double-sided business which starts by offering booking software that allows travel companies to enable bookings and sales on their own website. It also allows them to run their businesses from mobile, which is increasingly important for businesses that exist outdoors, as is common in travel and activities.

Thatthe hook that gets them into Peek, and from there the company offers more services under its ‘Pro& service and also the consumer-facing platform that service providers can join. Thatthe platformthat travelers (or, rather, action-seekers) use to book activities. That distinction on ‘travelers& is important since Bashir said that around one-third of Peek bookings come from people doing things in their own town, so noteveryone is traveling.

Peek founders Oskar Bruening and Ruzwana Bashir.

Peek claims to offer10,000 experiencesin the U.S. and Mexico, as well as spots like Paris and London. It has 500,000 reviews and ratings, each of which is verified since users can only leave them if they have booked, paid-for and completed their activity.

Bashir said, in addition, that the companysoftware has scaled to handle &hundreds of millions of dollars& in booking volume. She declined to give specific financial details, including revenue and profit/loss, but did say that the companyunit economics are &highly profitable& but it is seeking growth right now.

&Part of this round is allowing ourselves to go out and reach more businesses,& she added.

For now, Peek is keeping its focus on the U.S. but it has also expanded into Mexico since that is a well-trodden destination for U.S.-based travelers. That focus will continue following this round, with Bashir adamant that with an estimated two percent of activity spend booked online, thereplenty of potential growth to be had at home before tackling international markets.

She did, however, say that the decision to work with CathayInnovation — which raised its inaugural $320 million fund last year —was partly borne out of an awareness that when it is time to venture overseas, the firm has experience and networks that will be helpful.

Alexa is coming to your hotel room. Amazon this morning is announcing a new program called Alexa for Hospitality, designed to bring its voice assistant technology to everything from chain hotels to vacation rentals. The system can be customized to include key guest information, like checkout time or pool hours; allows guests to request services like housekeeping or room service; and can be configured to control &smart& hotel room functions, like adjusting the thermostat or raising the blinds.

Marriott is Amazonlaunch partner on the new platform, which is notable not only for the potential scale of this rollout, but also because the hotelier had been testing both Siri and Alexa devices ahead of todaynews.

According to Amazon,Marriott International will introduce the new Alexa experience at select properties in Marriott Hotels, Westin Hotels - Resorts, St. Regis Hotels - Resorts, Aloft Hotels, and Autograph Collection Hotels starting this summer.

The system will also be available by invitation to other hospitality providers beginning today.

Alexa for Hospitality works over Echo devices installed in guest rooms which will be customized for the hotel. Currently, supported devices include the Amazon Echo Dot, Echo and Echo Plus.

Via the Echo, guests will be able to ask Alexa for information about the hotel itself & like where the fitness center is located, when the pool is open, and other general information. But they&ll also be able to contact services like in-room dining, the concierge, the front desk, housekeeping, the spa, and so on, just by speaking to Alexa.

Amazon says the system will also work with existing hotel technology, includingDigiValet, Intelity, Nuvola, and Volara. This allows guests to say things like &Alexa, order wine& or &Alexa, book a spa appointment,& and then have those requests routed toproperty management, point of sale, and guest request systems for fulfillment.

Alexa can partially take the place of the in-room telephone, too, as a promo video Amazon shared showed how a guest called her kids at home from her hotel room using just the Echo.

If the hotel desires it, the Alexa system can be customized further to control various &smart home& features like the lights, blinds, the thermostat, and even the TVs.

Specifically, it works withguest room entertainment providers World Cinema and GuestTek for voice control of TV experiences, and offers in-room control of connected devices using Crestron and Inncom by Honeywell, Amazon says.

In addition, the guests will be able to play music and radio over iHeartRadio and TuneIn, which can be set up to play music stations that match the hotelbrand. (The hotel can control the volume, too, so guests can&t blast their neighbors.)

Guests can access third-party apps for things like workouts, airport wait times, meditation, white noise and more, including custom skills that may tie into a hotel partnership & as with Marriott Hotels& partnership with TED. In those locations, guest can ask Alexa fora TED Talk on mindfulness, creativity or leadership.

The Alexa for Hospitality system isn&t just the Echo devices in the room, however & ita suite of tools for configuring the Echo devices, available via a dashboard where hotels can update their information, enable skills, adjust settings and track usage.

Amazon says the devices are designed to be provisioned in minutes, and can alert an admin if they go offline.

They&ll also allow the hoteliers to measure guest engagement through analytics and reporting, allowing the hotel to adapt its own systems accordingly.

Though not available at launch, the platform will be updated in the future to allow guests to personalize their in-room Echo further by temporarily connecting their own Amazon account for the length of their stay.

This may be the most compelling feature of all.

Hotels are famous for rolling out technology in an effort to cater to their guests& needs thatnever really used & for example, those in-room Android tablets with hotel info that are too locked-down to enjoy; or those fancy clock radios you unplug so you can instead sleep in the dark with your smartphone by your side.

But with the ability to turn your hotel room Alexa into &your& Alexa, you&d be able to play your own personal music from services like Amazon Music, Spotify and Pandora or continue to listen to your audiobooks from Audible, Amazon says.

Plus, letbe honest & hotels will be able to capitalize on the fact that Alexa owners have grown so comfortable using Amazonvirtual assistant, they&ve probably already called out for Alexa by mistake when traveling, forgetting for a moment that shenot there.

Except now she will be.

Amazon says italso working withvacation rental companies like RedAwning, and boutique lifestyle properties within the Two Roads Hospitality portfolio including Thompson Hotels, Joie de Vivre, Destination Hotels and Alila to test out the new platform.

The company declined to share pricing information for the system, nor what (if any) bulk discount the hotels would be getting on their device orders.

&Marriott has a long track record of innovating for our guests, and we&re thrilled to be among the first to offer Alexa for Hospitality,& said Jennifer Hsieh, Vice President Customer Experience Innovation, Marriott International, in a statement about the launch.

&So many of our guests use voice technology in their home, and we want to extend that convenience to their travel experience. Guests ofCharlotte Marriott City Center and Marriott Irvine Spectrum will be among the first to experience a curated list of Alexa for Hospitality features. We will be evaluating guest feedback and adoption to inform how we expand the skills, features, and functionality offered through Alexa in our hotels,& she added.

Marriott says that Alexa for Hospitality will be rolled out to ten properties across the U.S. this summer.

This includes the Charlotte Marriott City Center in North Carolina and the Marriott Irvine Spectrum in California where the company often features its latest innovations, as Hsieh noted. It will also be deployed in eight other properties across Westin Hotels - Resorts, St. Regis Hotels - Resorts, Aloft Hotels, and Autograph Collection Hotels brands.

WhileHenrique Dubugras andPedro Franceschi were giving up on their augmented reality startup inside Y Combinator and figuring out what to do next, they saw their batch mates struggling to get even the most basic corporate credit cards — and in a lot of cases, having to guarantee those cards themselves.

Brex, their new startup, aims to try to fix that by offering startups a way to quickly get whateffectively a credit card that they can use without having to personally guarantee that card or wade through complex processes to finally get a charge card. Itgeared initially towards smaller companies, but Dubugras expects those startups to grow up with it over time — and that Brex is already picking up larger clients. The company, coming out of stealth, said it has raised a total of $57 million from investors including theY Combinator Continuity fund, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Yuri Milner, financial services VC Ribbit Capital and former Visa CEO Carl Pascarella. Y Combinator Continuity fund partnerAnu Hariharan and Ribbit Capital managing partner Meyer Malka are joining the companyboard of directors.

&We want to be the best corporate credit card fro startups,&Dubugras said. &We&re don&t require a personal guarantee or deposit, and we can give people a credit limit thatas much as ten times higher. We can get you a virtual credit card in literally 5 minutes, versus traditional banks, in which you&d have to personally guarantee the card and get a low limit and it takes weeks to approve.&

Startup executives go to Brexwebsite, sign up, and then put in their bank account info. They then use that banking information to underwrite the card, with the idea being that the service can see that the start has raised millions of dollars and doesn&t have the kind of wild liability that those banks think they might have given how young they are. Once the application is done, companies get a virtual credit card, and they can start divvying up virtual cards with custom limits for their employees.The company says it has attracted more than 1,000 customers and is now opening up globally.

The cards are designed to have better spending limits, and also offer company executives more granular ways to assign those limits to employees. The cards have to be paid off by the end of the month, and the rolling balance for those cards is dependent on the amount of capital each startup has available. The total limit available is, instead, a percentage of the companycash balance available. So rather than having to go through the process of getting approved for a card, the service can look at how much money is in a startupbank account and adjust the spending limit for all those cards accordingly.

Another aspect is automating the whole expense and auditing process. Rather than just going through typical applications like Concur and inputting specifics, card users can send a text message of a receipt through Brex associated with each transaction. Users will just get a text message about a charge — like a cup of coffee for a meeting with a potential business partner — and reply to that text with a message of the receipt to log the whole process. Everything is geared toward simplifying the whole process for startups that have an opportunity to be a bit more nimble and aren&t bogged down with complex layers of enterprise software. Each expense is looped in with a vendor, so executives can see the total amount of spending thathappening at that scale.

The ability to have those dynamic spending limits is just one example of whatDubugras hopes will make Brex competitive. Rather than slotting into existing systems, Brex has an opportunity to recreate the back-end processes that power those cards, which larger institutions might not be able to do as they&ve hit a massive scale and get less and less agile.Dubugras andFranceschi previously worked on and sold Pagar.me, a Brazilian payments processor, where they saw firsthand the complex nature of working with global financial institutions — and some of the holes they could exploit.

&Itnot like we&re two geniuses that came up with a lot of things that no one came up with,&Dubugras said. &Implementing them with third-party processors is hard, but we didn&t have any of [those integrations], so we can rebuild them from scratch. Ithard for banks to throw money at a problem and build those tools. We&ve rebuilt the way that these things work internally — they&d have to change fundamentally how the system works.&

While there are plenty of startups looking to quickly offer virtual cards, like Revolutdisposable virtual card service, Brex aims to be whateffectively a corporate card — just one thateasier to get and works basically the same as a normal card. Users still have to pay off the balance at the end of the month, but the idea there is that Brex can de-risk itself by doing that while still offering startups a way to get a card with a high limit to start paying for the services or tools they need to get started.