The recent acquisition of the Buuteeq, a digital marketing firm focused on hotels, by Priceline is an interesting development in hospitality digital marketing. The deal was announced on June 10, 2014 and shows how the digital landscape may be changing for hotels and other travel and hospitality companies.
Priceline traditionally thought of a travel site to book discount lodging and transportation appears to be expanding into the broader business of a travel and leisure technology company focused on providing solutions to hotels around the globe. The acquisition now allows Priceline not only to offer their partners a online place to sell their hotel rooms, but also can help with streamlining their digital marketing strategy perhaps helping to drive more demand to the hotels that Priceline partners with.
For hotel companies this is an interesting development as travel sites look to provide more innovative solutions to their partners and are now looking for new ways to drive demand. This consolidation around the booking portal and the digital marketing effort could also provide long-term challenges for hotel companies as well. There could come a time when the travel sites may have significant power over the demand and therefore be able to capture more of the value.
In the meantime the acquisition of Buuteeq is merely an interesting development for hotel companies and we will have to wait and see how Priceline leverages this platform. It does seem like an early step that could change the digital marketing landscape for companies in this industry.
http://www.buuteeq.com/product
http://online.wsj.com/articles/priceline-buys-cloud-based-marketing-software-firm-1402435334
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