Jun. 7--Bid4Vacations.com has received another healthy round of venture capital, despite business-to-consumer Internet companies losing favor with investors.
Rick Patch, a partner from one of the five Colorado venture capital firms that together infused $4.5 million into the Web-based vacation auction company, summed it up this way: People are passionate about their vacations.
"People are flooding the site, and there is smoke coming out of it," said Patch, a partner with Boulder-based Sequel Venture Partners. "We're already over the number of registered users that we expected to have at the end of the year."
Westminster-based Bid4Vacations advertises up to 80 percent discounts on vacations, including hotel packages and cruises and only specifies a six-month window for travel, Patch said. The company has more than 1 million registered members, who bid for vacation bargains on the company's Web site.
Getting funding was possible because of the company's unique Internet product, said Pamela Bergeson, the company's founder and president.
"The Internet allows different people to bid on packages to get a really good deal, and that's something that a travel agent couldn't duplicate," Bergeson said.
Catalyst Partners, Stonebridge Companies, iSherpa.net, Sequel Venture Partners and Ventura Inc. contributed to the recent round of financing.
The company will use the money to launch new programs, especially a co-branding version on travel Web sites that don't offer auctions, Bergeson said. Co-branding will allow other travel sites to offer vacation auctions that appear to be their own but are run by Bid4Vacations. Bid4Vacations offers a revenue share to those companies when someone buys a travel package.
"We're going hog-wild on this affiliate program," Bergeson said. "Instead of paying portals for big advertising dollars up front and producing no results, we only pay on performance."
Bid4Vacations.com moved from Louisville to Westminster in July and now has 43 employees. The company began in April 1999.
Bid4Vacations' Web site received more than 832 million unique visitors per month in May.
The company announced its $2 million first round of venture capital from Sequel Venture Partners in August.
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(c) 2000, Daily Camera, Boulder, Colo. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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