Lot18 Ventures Turns Wine Into Wine Country Excursions - All Things Digital
Lot18, which offers wines online for a discount, is expanding into travel deals that are packaged especially for lovers of the fermented grape.
With the launch of the travel vertical, the members-only, flash sales site treads more heavily into others' territory, which has been working on travel packages and other experiences for much longer.
Several other daily deals and flash sales sites have already gotten into the business of offering travel packages, ranging from Groupon's partnership with Expedia that afters the mass market to Gilt Groupe's high-end and exclusive vacations on its own Jetsetter.com.
The company's new Lot18 Experiences will offer a twist and focus exclusively on wine-and gourmet food-themed excursions, ranging from vineyard tours to dinners at well-know restaurants.
New York-based Lot18, which has raised roughly $13 million in total from investors, including the founders of Amazon-owned Diapers.com, has 550,000 members and has sold more than 500,000 bottles of wine.
The capital was expected to be used for launching new verticals, and now the launch of Lot18 Experiences coincides with the company's one-year anniversary.
When it goes live today, travel packages will include a seven-week trip to several of the world's major wine regions (Bordeaux, Napa, Mendoza, South Africa, Italy, Spain, Germany and Portugal). On a smaller scale, there will be one-night-only offers, such as food-and-wine-pairing dinners at Auberge du Soleil, in Napa and Le Bernardin in New York.
It will soon also launch in Chicago, Los Angeles and other major cities through a network of partner sites, to be announced later.
In addition to wine and experiences, the site also offers gourmet food products, such as olive oil, chocolate, caviar, coffee and more.
18 Oct, 2011--
Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNFpjRls6sE8E8iZy-eAl5MonA1ddg&url=http://allthingsd.com/20111018/lot18-ventures-turns-wine-into-wine-country-excursions/
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