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Posted Aug 19, 2010
Consultant Terry Jones, best known as the founder of Travelocity, doesn't think the global distribution system execs should be concerned about Google's planned acquisition of ITA Travel. He also said people in his circles expect Google to spin off ITA's reservations business. Here are some tidbits from my interview with Jones, also a Rearden Commerce board member, chairman of Kayak and former CIO of Sabre, at the National Business Travel Association convention last week.
Posted Jul 27, 2010
Now that the Google acquisition has been announced a great deal speculation has emerged as far as Google’s intentions. Given the fact that regulatory approval is required and that the deal has not been completed, ITA itself has been unable to speculate on Google’s strategy. Google has devoted some energy in stating that it will not become a seller of travel, but hasn’t disclosed specifics on their plans other than stating that it will improve the consumer shopping experience.
Posted Jul 9, 2010
What do the airline execs think of Google's planned acquisition of ITA Software? They're not really saying, and in many cases they probably don't know. Contacted Wednesday, most carriers declined to comment, although Lufthansa and Southwest Airlines offered some words.
Posted Jul 2, 2010
In light of Thursday's news, we thought readers might benefit from reading an interview with ITA Software co-founder Jeremy Wertheimer that took place in September 2009 at The Beat Live and was published that month in The Beat. The interview occurred a few weeks after Air Canada said it suspended work on a new reservations system constructed by ITA. Wertheimer took questions from Jay Campbell and audience members. He discussed the Air Canada development as well as other topics related to airline technology, faring and merchandizing, the complexities of making things simple, tailored selling by airlines and the point at which consumers get perturbed by too much information...
Campbell: ITA Software and Air Canada were working for many years with a lot of effort and a lot of money to build a host reservations system and you didn't even get to the scariest part, which is actually converting. How far did you get?
Wertheimer: The product is built. The analogy we like to use is, "I built this artificial heart, now it's just a simple matter of doing the heart transplant. Who wants to be first?" In a nice way, we spent a number of years learning exactly what they wanted. They were wonderful teachers, both in terms of what an airline needs and doing that schizophrenic dance of being very new and very forward-thinking in terms of the new things they wanted to do--unbundling and rebundling and having travelers take care of themselves instead of needing the servicing of employees--and also supporting the full range of legacy systems. Plus [they are a] big flag carrier, a big international carrier and the icing on the cake, a member of the Star Alliance, which has its own additional rules--in case you don't have enough. So they were a nice partner and that partnership is still there. We are still working with them and they are still supplying resources to help us. Essentially, the code for the inventory system and res system is done. The departure control system, which is the airport system, we're still working on. We'll be finishing those over the next year. We'll be rolling it out at a certain rate with Air Canada and they'll be making announcements over time. And now we're talking to a number of other airlines about rolling out the whole system or pieces of it.
A traditional inventory system is flexible the way Henry Ford was flexible at the beginning: You can have a car any color as long as it's black. You can have any product you want as long as it has a fare basis code that identifies it, and as long as it is settled a certain way. Our inventory system, when it wakes up has no idea what anything is. You tell it. It is all in data. It is not in software or burned in. So you can say, "This is the kind of product; we only have some number of seats and this is how we sell them. Here is another product called lounge access, keep selling those. Here is a product which is how many skis we can take on the plane and maybe that depends on the plane. Here is a product that is someone else's product, maybe hotel rooms, and here is how you handle that."
Posted Jul 1, 2010
It's confirmed: Google has agreed to buy ITA Software for $700 million cash. ITA co-founder and CEO Jeremy Wertheimer will stay on. He told me Google is "pretty interested in talking to airlines and getting their views" on ITA's res system business, but he was unable in a short phone call just now to say whether Google plans to integrate ITA's airfare shopping results into its general search page. The companies do say the deal "will create a new, easier way for users to find better flight information online, which should encourage more users to make their flight purchases online." The deal is "subject to customary closing conditions." More to come shortly.
Posted May 18, 2010
Let's connect some dots.
Dot 1: Google is in a quandary. It needs to enter big markets with high growth opportunities.
Dot 2: Google likes the travel industry. I've heard estimates that about 10% of its revenues are attributable to travel.
Dot 3: There's a big travel-related search market that Google hasn't cracked. It sits behind the walls of the GDSs.
Posted Apr 28, 2010
A lot has been written about the possible acquisition of of ITA Software by Google since it first appeared in the press last week. The travel technology blogosphere has been active with all sorts of speculation.
Posted Apr 21, 2010
Bloomberg reported that Google is in talks to buy ITA Software, and that the latter "may seek about $1 billion." It would be one of Google's most expensive acquisitions and place it firmly in the travel industry, although ITA develops non-travel specific software, as well. Its Needlebase software for organizing and publishing data is in "limited preview release."
"Three people familiar with the matter" told Bloomberg that the Google-ITA talks "may not lead to a transaction." ITA officials and their owners did not respond to the news service's requests for comment.
In addition to powering fare shopping for Kayak, Orbitz, Microsoft's Bing and a number of major airlines, ITA has corporate-travel relationships with Farelogix, nuTravel and Rearden Commerce. The company also built an airline reservations system, which Air Canada was supposed to launch but did not. ITA CEO Jeremy Wertheimer in September said the company was talking to "a number of airlines" about buying that system.
Posted Apr 9, 2008
Posted Feb 29, 2008
We checked in with Air Canada and ITA Software on the progress of their new airline reservation system, which Air Canada calls Polaris.
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