Already one of the best funded Travel 2.0 company, SideStep has raised another $15 million, bringing its total fundraising amount to $32 million. Norwest Venture Partners came in as the new investor joining previous investors Trident Capital and Saints Capital.

The deal comes as most online travel booking engines are experiencing a decline in traffic. The one exception is Kayak.com, the Sequoia Capital and General Catalyst-backed comparison travel engine that has seen its traffic figures solidify over the past year.

SideStep's acquisition of hotel review site TravelPost last year highlighted its strategy to become much more than just a travel booking engine. It's aiming for full fledged travel portal status and the additional $15 million should help. But, with a slew of competitors, SideStep still got a long way to go.

As I see it, the next breakthrough in this market is the ability to accurately recommend what trips people should take based on their past travel history and personal characteristics. A number of sites have taken a stab at this, but none have succeeed yet. This sort of recommendation engine would be a lucrative lead generation machine and nicely set up the rest of a comparison travel engines' service.

Tags: sidestep, kayak.com, travel, vc, venture capital