Travelmenu is among numerous online travel booking start-ups in Russia that recently closed impressive funding rounds. Runa Capital and Almaz Capital each contributed $800,000 to the project. Alexander Galitsky, Managing Director of Almaz Capital, commented: 'In Travelmenu we found a company that holds a promising position in the emerging market of online tourist services and in the future can claim a large share of that market'. The new investment would be used to attracted more users to the service as well as develop its infrastructure and establish a strong position in Russia and Ukraine.

Travelmanu was founded in 2007 and launched online bookings of tours, hotels and flights in 2009. The service caters for individual users as well as group tours and corporate customers. However, Nina Pogossova, CEO, told Cnews that currently their biggest customers are other tourist agencies (altogether about 2700). Attracting individuals to the service is one of the top priorities in the future.

In the same statement Nina Pogossova commented that Russian market for online travel services is still in its infancy. Thefore, the main criteria for comparing various services at the moment is their product base. Travelmenu's product base is quite extensive: it offers bookings in 277,586 hotels, 500 airlines and tours to 193 countries from 70 tour operators. Tours can be custom-made. Travelmenu also features a closed club for special discounted deals similar to Hipclub (though Travelmenu's discounts are much smaller).

Travelmenu has many online paying options: PayPal, Yandex.Money, WebMoney, Qiwi. Users can also pay in cash in one of the 2700 tourist agencies that use Travelmenu.

Vedomosti reports that in 2010 only 5% of services related to tourism and travel were conducted online in Russia. According to Maksim Klyagin, an analyst from Finam, online travel market could grow faster if it was not for legal restrictions. At the moment users can book a tour online but cannot buy it remotely because tour agencies are legally obliged to sign written contracts with their clients.

On the other hand, Russian market for tourist services has a lot of growth potential especially in consumer segment, thinks Andrey Bliznuk (partner at Runa Capital). Structural changes like higher standards of living, growing Internet penetration, development of online payment services as well as improved visa conditions for Russian citizens contribute to the overall growth of online travel services in the future.