Travel technology giant Travelport will help raise some eyebrows around the travel industry today after buying the Sprice metasearch engine.
Travelport will be the first of the main global distribution systems to complete such a (so far undisclosed) deal for an existing B2C consumer travel search site.
Sprice is based in Singapore and has an office in France – existing employees will transfer to Travelport as part of the acquisition from venture capital firms Sofinnova Partners and Walden International, backers of the company since 2006.
Travelport says the motivation for buying a metasearch engine such as Sprice is two-fold:
- A proven technology platform that complements and extends the existing GDS channel and enables Travelport to deliver more content.
- An established inventory of hotel options and comparison tools that significantly add to the existing hospitality portfolio.
Travelport currently has around 88,000 properties via the Galileo and Worldspan systems, covering 290 hotel chains.
Another interesting element will be the addition on Sprice’s hotel reviewing system. Currently around 120,000 properties on the system feature a review of some kind.
The addition of Sprice, Travelport says, will give it access to a further 240,000 hotels through the new system and therefore into its existing distribution platforms.
Interestingly the announcement has concentrated almost exclusively on what Sprice will be able to give Travelport in terms of hotels, with no mention at all of the flight engine included in the system.
Nevertheless, Travelport has arguably signalled a number of things through the acquisition: it is prepared to buy its way into getting access to more hotel inventory (understandable) but it is also keen to acquire relatively small companies in order to get its hands on new technology, rather than develop its own.
Sprice will be run from the new Consumer & New Ventures division, unveiled in late-April 2010 and headed by ex-Shasta Ventures exec Michael Buhr.
The GDSs have so far had a relatively arms-length relationship with the metasearch sector until now.
Amadeus has quietly been playing with metasearch through its low-key Amadeus.net service (powered by Kayak) for a number of years, but has never formally promoted or pushed it as a business channel.
It also created the meta-pricer platform to help metasearch engines obtain a smoother ride with online travel agencies and airlines after many of the latter complained about increasingly heavy loads on their system as a result of screen scraping.
Interesting that according to Compete.com the largest referrer of traffic to sprice.com last month was http://www.viamichelin.co.uk (a mapping site). Not sure if they’re buying advertising or integrated on the site somewhere (I couldn’t find them – and viamichelin.com seems to integrate liligo). Speaking of ViaMichelin.com, I noticed a Travel tab on their site. Is that new? I don’t recall seeing it before.
@jim – will investigate re ViaMichelin
If I remember correctly Sprice raised around 8 million euros in 2006 , so this acquisition would have to have been fairly large to give original investors a decent return. So my guess is that the deal would have been between US$15 – US$20 million
It will be interesting to see whether this forces other GDS to start looking at other similar sized meta search players
I think the convergence of all of this technology is wonderful, it takes all of the guesswork out of travel. What’s next, a kennel in space? We have to take care of our little buddies while we’re out there traveling around everywhere.
They may have added content and technology to their portfolio, BUT doesn’t this set them up to compete directly with their own customers (Travel Agencies)?
@Kevin
Sprice start at the early begining here http://voyages.orange.fr/
They are still there
(make a test and see your navigator adress bar)
Orange = main telco, main Internet provider, main mobile provider, main portal, etc, in France
not so bad for Sprice !
Ask your French node
why does travelport choose sprice.com? what do u think?
@Claude
why does travelport choose sprice.com? what do u think?