Rich Barton helped transform the way consumers book airfare, hotels and rental cars on the Web. Now, the former Expedia CEO is jumping back into the online travel game.

Earlier this year, we reported that Barton had joined forces with VacationSpot.com co-founder and former general manager of Microsoft's travel group, Greg Slyngstad, on a new startup. At the time, Barton -- who retains the CEO post at Zillow.com and serves as a venture partner at Benchmark Capital -- didn't want to say too much about what they were up to.

But now more details are emerging. And it looks like Barton is assembling some of his old cronies from the early days of Expedia to create a new brand in the travel space. That new startup -- at least for now -- is dubbed NewTravelco. And its team not only includes Barton and Slyngstad, but former Expedia veterans such as Simon Breakwell and Sunil Shah.

Could this be an Expedia killer? Barton wouldn't provide details, saying the company plans to launch its service later this year. But the Internet entrepreneur -- who is serving as non executive chairman at NewTravelco -- admits that the pressure will be on given the enormous success of Expedia. [Post updated with details of the company's financing, including the involvement of Brad Silverberg of Ignition Partners]

But that's not stopping the team from pushing forward, and Barton notes in his bio on the site that "it feels very natural to be working with the guys again on a fun new travel project."

Barton

"Online travel is huge, it’s a super-fun category (who doesn’t love to travel?), and there is a ton of innovation happening right now, given that the web is a very different place from when we started Expedia back in 1994," Barton tells TechFlash. "I admit to being a little nervous to live up to people’s expectations of us, but we are putting together an all-star team, and, in my experience, the quality of the team is way more important than the initial idea. Things always change, and I’m sure they will for NewTravelco.com as well."

The company's Web site offers this brief mission statement:

"We believe it is still early days in the Internet travel revolution. The increasing power of transparency, connectivity, and mobility will continue to open new worlds to travelers and new channels for suppliers. We believe that a small, passionate team of people can effect massive change."

The online travel blog, Tnooz, first reported on the company's direction and noted that it has closed its series A financing. A search of SEC filings produced no results on financing deals under the NewTravelco name.

However, Barton does have a direct pipeline into Benchmark Capital, where he serves as a venture partner. Benchmark has not only funded the Seattle online travel startup Zillow.com, but other projects where Barton is directly involved. Those include startups such as online lawyer directory Avvo -- which just scored $10 million -- and Glassdoor -- which is creating an online community around workplaces.

Barton is taking a passive role at NewTravelco, and is leaving day-to-day operations to folks such as Breakwell and Shah. Breakwell -- who joined Expedia in its early days and operated all of the non-U.S. business units -- plans to move to Seattle from London to help run the new startup.

Shah, who is listed as CTO and co-founder of NewTravelco, already lives here. He was one of the early software developers at Expedia, rising through the ranks to vice president of engineering. Most recently, Shah served as vice president of engineering for the Disney Interactive Media Group, a position he held for nine months before leaving to start NewTravelco.

UPDATE: Early Monday morning, an SEC filing appeared for NewTravelco with some additional details about the company. It listed Brad Silverberg -- a co-founder of Bellevue-based Ignition Partners -- as a director. It also showed that Joel Cutler -- a managing director at General Catalyst Partners -- as a board member.

Cutler is especially interesting since he previously co-founded National Leisure Group. He's also a board member at Kayak.com, the online travel search engine where NewTravelco's Slyngstad also serves as a director.

The filing indicates that NewTravelco has raised $9.8 million in new equity financing.