PRESS RELEASE: Travel planning start up Kukunu launches today and announces investments from Kima Ventures, Jaina Capita and Seedcamp.

Kukunu develops a new travel planning experience aimed at simplifying the life of travellers around the world. The foundersʼ vision is to create the dreamed online travel agent, giving the means to users to build fantastic trips with a service fuelled by passionate travellers and great technology.

London, UK (Tuesday 20 July 2010) - Ever had to plan a 2 weeks trip across several cities? Ever had to use a calendar, a piece of paper or even a spreadsheet to keep track of your travel plans?

50% of travellers consider planning a major pain point before leaving for vacation and online users spend an average of 29 days on more than 20 different websites between the first search and booking.

This is the problem that Kukunu, a London-based start up, is addressing by building a service that will help travellers throughout the entire planning experience.

Founded by Gerald Goldstein, CTO, engineer with a PhD in Physics and Itamar Lesuisse, CEO, ex-Amazon. Both co-founders got tired of spending weeks planning their trip on a spreadsheet and weren't satisfy with current solutions. The story started in September 2009 at Seedcamp where Kukunu was finalist, they quickly worked on a first prototype that they presented for the first time at LeWeb in Paris. Few months later, the start up was funded by Jaina Capital (Marc Simoncini), Kima Ventures (Xavier Niel) and Seedcamp.

Whether it's 2 weeks in Spain or 10 days in California, Kukunu helps you build your itinerary across cities before planning all aspects of your trip, such as hotels, restaurants, sights or activities. Because you might not travel alone, Kukunu is a collaborative experience, allowing co-travellers to work together to plan their trips. Your friends on Kukunu, Twitter or Facebook can also contribute by sharing their ideas and suggestions.

To bring the best experience to travellers, Kukunu has teamed up with trusted travel providers to directly access more than 100,000 hotels and 200,000 activities, restaurants and sights. Partners include travel players such as Booking.com and Expedia.

Screenshot 1: Kukunu brings a new service to travelers to create their itinerary online, through a simple user experience.

Screenshot 2: While building their itinerary, travelers benefit from a very large selection of Hotels, Activities and Restaurants.

For more information, contact Itamar Lesuisse, +44 78 77 340 184 or itamar@kukunu.com