Peixe Urbano is launching a travel vertical, the Brazilian company announced today. Initially available in Brazil, this in-house travel agency will be known Peixe Urbano Viagens.
As you may know, Peixe Urbano started out in 2010 as a Groupon clone, pioneering the daily deal model in Brazil. However, it has been working hard over the last few months to diversify its reach while staying in line with its initial mission.
“Peixe Urbano’s mission is to help people find the best businesses in town, and to help our partners grow their business,” the company’s CEO Julio Vasconcellos declared when it bought a food delivery startup to launch Peixe Urbano Delivery. A few weeks earlier, it had already acquired a restaurant booking startup called Zuppa.
As for Peixe Urbano Viagens, its ambition is to target a dynamic segment, driven by the growth of Brazil’s middle class. According to a report published by comScore last August, “Brazilian travel site audience has nearly tripled in the past three years, with one in three online users visiting the category in July 2012.”
As a matter of fact, Brazilians are traveling more often and increasingly booking those stays online. According to Peixe Urbano, it was already reaching part of this market with tourism-related coupons, of which it sold 400,000 since its launch. Still, the launch of a dedicated vertical and integrated search features should help it grow its market share.
Paradoxically, Peixe Urbano already has competitors in this segment, starting with its hotel-focused copycat Hotel Urbano, which topped comScore’s ranking of online travel destinations with over 3 million unique visitors per month.
Yet, Peixe Urbano guarantees that it will offer better prices, more quality and diversity than other players. In addition, it hopes to differentiate itself through customer service; for instance, it will provide assistance 24/7, and promises that customers will get a full reimbursement if they can’t find satisfactory dates for their stay during the coupon’s validity period.
As we reported, Peixe Urbano likely has the capital needed to finance its diversification. Earlier this year, it announced a third financing round in which Morgan Stanley and T.Rowe Price took part, in addition to incremental investments from General Atlantic and Tiger Global.
Bonus: If you didn’t make it to TNW Latin America Conference last August, here’s a video of Julio Vasconcellos’ keynote on the current state of the Brazilian Internet scene:
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