Investors throw $3M at travel site

In 1995, he co-founded Springfield-based TravelNow.com, a move that netted $47.4 million six years later in a sale to Hotel Reservation Network, now Hotels.com.

His latest venture, Gusto LLC, is a community-based travel Web site that launched June 1 at www.gusto.com.

With Gusto, Wasson has the financial backing of DHST LLC, a venture capital group comprising local businessman William Darr and three other investors. Six days after the launch, the investors added $3 million to the $1 million Gusto had in initial startup money, Wasson said.

The company plans to use the money to expand its marketing and editorial departments, and to add more cities and offerings to the site.

“I’ve known Jeff for some time, and I really feel like he’s a sharp individual,” Darr said. “He was successful the first time around with the company he developed, and he’s got a lot of good people around him there. So we thought we’d put some money there and let them see what they can do.”

Darr is founder and board chairman of American Dehydrated Foods Inc., a company that develops and markets pet food products. Fellow ADF executives Thomas Slaight, Kurt Hellweg and Ronald Terry are also DHST investors, though the investment is independent of ADF.

Gusto, incorporated in February, currently has 15 employees at its offices in Woodhurst Office Park, including former TravelNow employees Whit Ehrler and Noah Dorrance.

Ehrler is Gusto’s chief financial officer, and Dorrance is executive producer.

Wasson’s TravelNow.com partner, Chris Noble, is not involved with Gusto.

Not a booking engine

Wasson said the new site, which is developed internally, is different from other travel sites in that it’s not a simple booking engine.

“There are opportunities to book travel and receive travel deals, and as the site expands, we hope those will become more prevalent to the user. But right now, it’s really just about planning a vacation, researching a vacation and sharing that information with your friends and family,” Wasson said. “We’re trying to get beyond that sort of booking engine process that has been wildly popular on the Internet, but wildly replicated as well.”

Because booking travel is not Gusto’s main revenue source, the site is designed to make most of its money through advertising.

Site users will be able to get travel recommendations through the site’s patent-pending Character Navigation System and its list of Gusto Characters – fictional characters, such as the “health nut,” the “retirees” and the “socialite,” that can be used as a basis for building a more individual profile and joining the site as a “Gustonian.”

Visitors will get a chance to specify travel preferences to get information more tailored to their specific tastes.

Users can also create lists of their favorite hotels and attractions, and publish opinions and ratings of travel sites for other visitors to read.

The site currently boasts information on more than 500,000 attractions, 250,000 restaurants and 60,000 hotels in cities around the world.

“Visitors are looking for what to do, what to see, where to eat while they travel,” Wasson added. “So we’re trying to provide that information at the point of interest, and ultimately the point of purchasing.”

The travel information, as well as the advertising, will be personalized for better returns.

“If you’re looking for a restaurant in New York City that meet certain criteria, we deliver a set of restaurants that meets those criteria,” Wasson said. “It helps us limit the number of messages sent to each consumer, and cuts what they don’t want to look for.”

Once a visitor has chosen a character or created a profile through which to filter the site’s information, advertising is presented that corresponds with the visitor’s selections. The targeted advertising, Wasson said, makes the ads less obtrusive to the visitor and more profitable for the advertiser.