Online travel agencies have spent years helping customers find the cheapest flight, hotel room or rental car for their vacation. One of those companies, Rocket Travel, was acquired in 2015 by a major player in the space, Bookings Holdings — which owns Booking.com, Priceline and KAYAK.
After working through the integration with Booking Holdings, several alumni from Rocket Travel decided in 2021 to form Cruisebound, a travel website specifically designed to help millennial and Gen Z travelers book their first cruise.
Cruisebound announced Wednesday that it launched its mobile- and desktop-friendly platform. The company also announced that it raised $10 million in Series A financing in September, which brought its total funds raised to $12.7 million.
The Series A round was co-led by former Booking Holdings CEO Jeff Boyd and PAR Capital Ventures. The round was joined by Tripadvisor co-founder Steve Kaufer, Concur founder Steve Singh and other investors.
Cruisebound co-founder and CEO Pierre-Olivier Lepage said in a statement that other travel sites are not designed to handle cruise bookings, which he said is a complicated process.
“We designed Cruisebound to sell cruises and only cruises,” Lepage said in a statement. “We offer an easy-to-use site that is optimized for mobile, which is where younger travelers prefer to research and book vacations. Then we combine the instant booking of an online travel agency with the live customer service of an offline agent.”
Cruisebound compares prices, itineraries, ships and cabin types across all major cruise lines. It also highlights personalized discounts based on a user’s age, past cruise reservations and other factors. Cruisebound does not charge a booking fee, and it claims its deals can save users between 15 percent and 30 percent on their cruise.
Cruisebound is a remote-first company headquartered in NYC. The company has more than 30 employees and is currently hiring for engineers.
