Skift Take
Splitty's acquisition of Cancelon's assets is notable because it highlights a seemingly clever way to advertise on travel price-comparison sites. Think of it as "metasearch arbitrage."
Splitty, a Tel Aviv-based startup, has been telling hotels it knows how to raise their online booking game while boosting guest satisfaction. For a year-and-a-half, Splitty has been knitting together different reservation types to build the cheapest deals for consumers. But the company has had next-to-no marketing savvy and has remained a niche brand.
To help overcome its marketing gap, Splitty recently acquired the assets of Cancelon, a Boston-based company. Cancelon processed a half-a-billion dollars in hotel bookings last year thanks to its digital marketing chops. But pandemic-related losses bankrupted it in March.
The scale of the companies, which are both small, is less impressive than what the merger reveals about guerrilla marketing tactics in online travel.
Most price-comparison search companies, such as Google, Kayak, Trivago, and TripAdvisor, typically put their thumb on the scale in their ad auctions to favor an online travel agency quoting the best hotel rate. They do this even if the company lacks a big budget and can't afford to spend more than giants like Booking Holdings or Trip.com Group.
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For example, Google gives prominence in its so-called metasearch results for hotels to the distributor or supplier that offers the lowest r
