TVTrip raises another €7 million. Total raised now almost $14mm

Hotel video review site TVTrip.com has just finalised their Series B round raising €7 million (first saw the story over at TechCrunch). Brings total raised so far to just shy of $14mm (depending on how you convert Euros to Dollars and not including initial angle rounds). Investors included Balderton Capital (portfolio includes Bebo) , Partech International (portfolio includes Dailymotion) and AGF Private Equity (portfolio also includes Dailymotion). The latter new to this round.

I get the video review space. I can see clearly how consumer conversion will increase based on better hotel descriptions and videos. What is not settled in my mind is how to do the perfect Video. Clearly consumers have short attention spans. We know that the length of the average video viewed online is less than a few minutes. We also know that consumers are looking mroe and more for content from actual guests/users/

There is thus a huge challenge in getting the right balance between supplying video but making it short, sharp, relevant and real.

At PhoCusWright in LA a Video back-end provider/production company TripTelevision (CEO Kulin Strimbu) waxed lyrically about their auto clip technology that takes short sections from a long vidoe and auto-compiles it into a 30 sec spot. So that in 30 seconds you can see a bit of the lobby, room, pool, restaurant etc. A click on the video at any time will take you to the longer version video devoted to that particular part of the hotel. TVTrip has approached with a sliding channel approach where options on which part of the hotel you want to look at are provided as different channels to select from.

Video is here to stay but these layout options need further work. TVTrip now have millions of dollars to spend on working it out (and keeping up with increasing broadband costs). Congratulations to CEO Marc Ruff and team.