TripAdvisor acquires flight and airport information app provider GateGuru

TripAdvisor, the world's largest travel ratings website yesterday said that it has acquired US start-up GateGuru, a mobile app focused on flight and airport information, for an undisclosed sum.

Founded in 2009 by Dan Gellert and Jeff Arena, New York City-based GateGuru has been developed and nurtured by a small group of travel enthusiasts, who just happened to be designers, developers and business people.

Built on a mix of user-generated content and information from the airports, GateGuru offers flyers detailed maps and insights on stores, restaurants, amenities and gate locations.  It also gives weather forecasts, estimated security wait times and real-time flight status information.

GateGuru is backed by angel investors including, Chamath Palihapitiya, Allen Morgan, Tom Glocer and BHV.

The GateGuru team will continue to operate out of New York City, and report to Bryan Saltzburg, the general manager of New Initiatives and leader of the TripAdvisor Flights product and SeatGuru brand.

"Flying is often an essential part of a trip and we have continually developed our suite of flights products, from the pricing and availability search on TripAdvisor, to our award-winning SeatGuru.com, with seat maps and more," said Steve Kaufer, co-founder and CEO of TripAdvisor, Inc.

"GateGuru nicely complements our existing flights products and we look forward to working with the GateGuru team as they continue to manage the GateGuru app and add great functionality to the TripAdvisor mobile experience."

Spun off from Expedia Inc in 2011, Massachusetts-based TripAdvisor is the world's largest travel site and offers advice from real travellers and a wide variety of travel choices and planning features with seamless links to booking tools.

TripAdvisor branded sites are the largest travel community in the world, operates in 30 countries worldwide with more than 200 million unique monthly visitors and over 100 million reviews and opinions.