Travel website Traveport announced on Tuesday that it has purchased the meta-search engine Sprice, according to Tnooz.com.
Sprice allows consumers to search for inexpensive hotels and flights worldwide, and when combined with Travelport, will list 88,000 properties covering 290 hotel chains. Sprice’s hotel reviewing system will also be carried over to Travelport.
Sprice was targeted by Travelport for two reasons, says Tnooz.com. First, Sprice is a proven technology that enhances Travelport. Sprice also has an extensive list of hotel options and comparison tools that add to the existing portfolio.
Travelport has made no mention of what it plans on doing with the flight aspect of Sprice. Traditionally, Travelport has only focused on hotels.
This purchase indicates that Travelport is interested in purchasing small firms with new technology, rather than developing its own, speculates Tnooz.com.
The travel sector has been a hot subject in the search engine optimization (SEO) industry in 2010. Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Google may be looking to buy ITA software, a company that has developed programs used by travel giants like Orbitz.
