TourWrist polishes its travel tech tiara with $1.25M

TourWrist swept the awards at the Travel Innovation Summit two weeks ago, making it the celebrity starlet of the travel tech community. Now, the startup has $1.25 million in funding to add to its sparkle and shine, and to roll out its [red carpet] roadmap for the future.

TourWrist is an iOS application where users can rate, label, and submit 360° panoramas. People use the platform to share their photography and to check out travel destinations, homes, and businesses. Instead of old-school panoramas, TourWrist leverages mobile technology to create high-quality, dynamic footage. Users shoot their own pictures using the camera on their iPhone, and then preview, edit, stitch, and share from the app.

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TourWrist presented new features at DEMO Spring 2012, including new APIs and SDKs, and the ability to link multiple panoramas together, as well as to other photos, videos, audio, websites etc… It is used by amateur photographers, professionals, and businesses alike. TourWrist aims to reach tens of millions of people in the next six months, and already claims to operate the world’s largest professional panoramic photographer community.

This investment will help expand marketing initiatives with brands such as hotels, cruise lines and vacation rentals, as well as with tourism organizations and online travel agents that want to incorporate panoramic photography into their campaigns. For example, a Royal Caribbean cruise near the Hubbard Glacier:

Thayer Ventures, which focuses on hospitality-centered startups, and General Catalyst Partners participated in this seed round, along with angel investors. General Catalyst first invested $250K after TourWrist won the General Catalyst Award for Travel Innovation. Combined with $500K from a friends-and-family round, this brings TourWrist’s total amount raised to $1.75 million.

TourWrist is based in San Francisco. Read the company’s blog post.