No more bad hotel rooms: Room 77 raises $10.5M

Venture capitalists clearly care about the quality of their hotel rooms. Room 77, a startup that helps users find the right hotel room for their needs, just announced that it has raised $10.5 million in a second round of funding.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Room 77 first unveiled its service at the Launch conference in February, where it won the event’s top prize. While most existing hotel search sites don’t give you much information about your room itself, Room 77’s database tells users about things like room category, square footage, bed type, and elevator proximity. The data is gathered by the Room 77 team through partnerships with hotel chains like Kimpton and Starwood, and with the help of crowdsourced information from travelers. The company also offers an iPhone application that stores your preferences and can make recommendation about whether or not to accept a room.

The new funding was led by General Catalyst Partners, with participation from previous investors PAR Capital Management, Sutter Hill Ventures, Felicis Ventures (whose founder Aydin Senkut also invested in VentureBeat), Expedia and Zillow co-founder Rich Barton, and former IAC Travel president Erik Blachford. Room 77 has now raised a total of $13.5 million.

The company says it has indexed 500,000 hotel rooms on 2,500 properties, and it’s concentrating for now on 24 markets.