TripIt nabs $5.1 million from old-school travel powerbroker

TripIt, which organizes personal travel information, expects to announce Thursday that it has raised $5.1 million in a series B round of financing from travel behemoth Sabre Holdings and German investment group European Founders Fund.

Seed investor O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, which had previously put $1 million into the company, also participated in the round.

San Francisco-based TripIt, which was founded in October 2006, helps people plan trips, including flights and restaurant reservations, and then share their travel itineraries with friends and family. That the company raised millions from an old-school travel company like Sabre proves there's still room to innovate in the business, especially with the use of social-networking applications.

TripIt said it expects to use the money to further develop and market its 6-month-old service in the United States and abroad.

Tim O'Reilly, partner at O'Reilly AlphaTech, said TripIt helps manage e-mail and personal data from the Web, which can sometimes work at cross purposes. "We have so many overlapping applications, and the next frontier is getting them to work better together," he said in a statement.