Expedia acquires travel photo platform Trover

Trover will remain an independent brand under the Expedia umbrella

When I was 20 years old, I went on a 10 week expedition around Europe, visiting 13 different countries. This was right around the time when digital camera were becoming popular, in that brief period right before the iPhone changed everything, so there was a limit on the number of photos I could take. Now, if I were to go on that same trip, I'd probably come back with roughly a million of them.

Taking vacation photos has become so easy that there's even a website dedicated to sharing your favorites, called Trover, which lets users connect with other travelers through photos and shared stories.

Now that community is growing to grow much larger, after the company was acquired by Expedia on Wednesday.

No financial terms of the deal were disclosed, but it sounds as though Trovo will remain an independent brand under the Expedia umbrella, along with Hotels.com, trivago and HomeAway.

"Expedia’s mission is to “revolutionize travel through technology,” and they believe Trover’s beautiful content and social experience is a great fit with this mission. We can’t imagine higher recognition for our community," Jason Karas, Co-founder and CEO of Trover, wrote in a blog post.

Founded in 2011, Trover describes itself as "part gallery and part guidebook; a location-tagging and social-photo sharing experience that could connect people and fuel passion for exploration."

With Trover, users could either see photos uploaded by other travelers, or create their own Trover List, which would include automatically geo-tagged photos, along with a short description about why the photo was posted.

With over 450 million visitors across all of its properties, Expedia will no doubt boost Trover's user numbers.

"This means your photos will have a much larger impact. Hopefully, many new visitors will see and be inspired by your travels. We’re also betting that some of these visitors will join our community, adding new voices, relationships, and killer images that fuel our passion for adventure," Karas wrote.

"We expect the Trover experience will get a boost from Expedia, too. We’ll have a strong partner as we continue to build Trover and explore new ways to turn travel dreams into action."

This is Expedia's first acquisition since it acquired Airbnb competitor HomeAway in November of last year for $3.9 billion.

Trovo had raised one round of funding, a $2.5 million seed led by Concur. General Catalyst Partners, Benchmark Capital, Trover co-founder Rich Barton and several other original angel investors in July of 2013.

Vator reached out to Expedia and Trover for more information. We will update this story if we learn more. 

(Image source: trover.com)