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"Hopper, a yet to launch\u00A0travel planning startup with executives from\u00A0Expedia and TripAdvisor, has just announced a $12M funding round led by\u00A0OMERS Ventures. With this news,\u00A0Derek Smyth of OMERS Ventures is joining the Hopper board of directors.\r\n\r\nThe site, which is launching later this year and is headquartered in Massachusetts, claims to have\u00A0crawled &amp;quot;more than half a billion pages of travel data,&amp;quot; with hopes of becoming the\u00A0largest travel database in the world. It's noteworthy that Hopper had already raised $10M prior, and this new fund will be used towards investments in &amp;quot;big data.&amp;quot;\u00A0Given that the company has yet to launch, $22M in funding is impressive.\r\n\r\nAccording to Hopper CEO Frederic Lalonde, the startup's mission is all about taking the pain points out of trip planning. This is by no means an empty space, so Hopper will really have to deliver to make an impression in travel tech.\r\nPlanning a trip can be tedious and frustrating. Information is often scattered across the web, making research difficult and time-consuming. Eventually, people feel like they have to settle for just 'good enough.' At Hopper, we are working hard to transform this process and bring the joy and inspiration back to travel planning.\r\nSign up for an early look at Hopper via the link below. According to the announcement, the first\u00A0500 users that do so will receive early access.\r\n\r\n\u27A4\u00A0Hopper"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/08/15/stealth-travel-site-hopper-raises-12m-funding-omers-ventures/>