Google's bid to acquire ITA Software could yield some innovative ways to plan travel. If the deal goes through, that is.

Google's possible acquisition of ITA Software, a very quiet giant in the travel industry, has executives buzzing about the implications of the deal, which was leaked by Bloomberg on April 21 and is estimated at $1 billion. Yet the prospective buy hasn't attracted a great deal of attention among traveling consumers.

That's probably because most have never heard of ITA, a Cambridge, MA, firm that was founded in 1996 and has a long-standing reputation for innovation in the travel industry. ITA provides travel information and services to numerous U.S. airlines, online travel agencies like Orbitz.com, travel metasearch sites like Kayak, and even Micosoft's Bing Travel. It has been estimated that more than 50 percent of airfare searches conducted in the United States use ITA software in some form or another.

Analysts say that Google has no intention of becoming an online travel agency like Expedia or Travelocity--primarily because Google pockets considerable advertising revenue from travel companies and doesn't want to jeopardize those relationships.

But even without travel-booking capabilities, a Google-ITA partnership is likely to yield far richer search results and perhaps some innovative ways that information is displayed, analysts said.

The improvements in travel search queries could be significant, said Joe Buhler, a senior analyst with Phocuswright, a travel industry market research firm. "The more relevant Google can make the search, the more useful Google will be as a tool for planning trips," he said. "Travel search is a huge vertical, and you can assume that Google has some interesting plans or else they wouldn't go after it."

Buhler said it would not be surprising to see Google move into hotel data, since it is currently experimenting with displaying hotel rates on Google Maps. And Google must surely understand that hotels have become a reliable revenue producer for online travel agencies, which earn very small commissions from airlines these days. "Hotels are a huge potential source of revenue," he said.

Beyond travel data itself, Google is likely to launch some fresh ways to display the information, said Norm Rose, president of Travel Tech Consulting. "Google has done some experimenting by including hotels and prices on Google Maps, and while it's unknown how ITA information would be displayed, I think it will be innovative," Rose said. "For instance, you might enter the amount of money you have to spend, and then ask where can I go this weekend?"

Rose also sees Google creating new mobile applications that take advantage of its travel search capabilities and location-based servicesif the deal closes.

Possible losers in the acquisition would be travel metasearch sites like Kayak.com, Buhler said. These sites collect data from various sources but send you to an online travel agency or airline for availability and booking. Google is likely to do the same thing, and that doesn't portend well for today's travel metasearch sites.

Analysts agree that ITA is well respected for innovation in building solutions and resourcefulness in getting at travel data. For instance, Rose said the company has created a sophisticated technology called Needlebase that harvests data from Web sites and a wide range of other online data to create a vertical search engine or enhance existing data.

In other words, Needlebase aims to make it possible to find almost anything, no matter how inconsequential (it's the needle in the haystack metaphor). "So if you want to rent a bicycle in Monterrey, you should be able to grab that," Rose said.

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