Travelport Buys Singaporean Search Engine To Boost Hotel Reach

Travelport today said it would bulk up the hotel content in its global distribution systems and enhance search and shopping capabilities through the acquisition of Singapore-based consumer travel search engine Sprice. Travelport did not disclose the terms of the deal.

The four-year-old Sprice.com search engine has an online presence in Europe and Asia, where it offers air and hotel metasearch and more than 120,000 user-generated hotel reviews. Travelport, however, plans to adopt some of Sprice's consumer-focused functionality and apply it to the GDS channel.

Taking advantage of Sprice's Asian and European strength, Travelport said it gains the ability to connect GDS clients with more than 240,000 international hotel properties. Sprice also will help power new merchandizing capabilities, comparison shopping and help bring in content generally outside of the GDS into the agency channel.

Using Sprice technology, Travelport plans to offer non-GDS hotel inventory through its upcoming Universal Desktop by establishing an application programming interface option "for those travel suppliers who would not normally consider participation in the GDS channel, making their inventory available to GDS-connected agents."

Travelport said the deal also provides the platform to offer new content to GDS subscribers beyond the standard air, car and hotel to include parking, events, attractions and dining search.

"With Sprice, Travelport has acquired firstly a highly innovative proven technology platform that is deeply synergistic to our GDS business, enabling us to deliver and distribute more content and secondly an established and vibrant inventory of hotel options and comparison tools that will significantly add to our existing hospitality portfolio," Travelport GDS president and CEO Gordon Wilson said in a statement today.

Travelport said it has offered employment to all of Sprice's 18 employees, including CEO and cofounder Jerome Thil, who in a statement today said, "Bringing together Sprice's metasearch technology and Travelport's powerful GDS transaction processing capabilities creates great synergy and the potential for new development and innovation, charting an exciting new path forward for us."