Travelclick Acquires Rubicon Creating Global Hotel Industry Leader in Business Intelligence

NEW YORK, March 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Travelclick®, the leading provider of revenue generating solutions for hoteliers worldwide, today announced that the company has acquired Rubicon, a provider of competitive market intelligence to the travel and hospitality industry.  

Tim Hart, former CEO of Rubicon, will become Executive Vice President and head of Travelclick's Business Intelligence division and will report to Larry Kutscher, CEO of Travelclick.

Together, the combined organization will bring best-in-class business intelligence products and services to the hospitality and travel-related industries. Both Rubicon and Travelclick's customers will benefit from the unique combination of the substantial data and technology assets each company brings to the table.  This will provide a common platform that delivers value to hotel chains, independent hotels and other industry stakeholders.

"The combination of Travelclick and Rubicon enables us to do more for our hospitality clients, helping them to make better, more informed decisions," said Larry Kutscher, CEO of Travelclick.  "By bringing together Rubicon's strong relationships with major hotel chains and Travelclick's established property-level relationships, we have created a unique and powerful offering. With Rubicon and its professionals as part of the Travelclick team, we are positioned for rapid growth and to serve our customers better than ever before."  

Commenting on the acquisition, Tim Hart said, "For some time we have been looking for the right partner to help us grow.  After an extensive search and months of discussions, we determined that Rubicon could grow its business and better serve its customers by joining forces with Travelclick.  Travelclick has similar values and a strong business and technology platform with many of its products available as software-as-a-service (SaaS).  By leveraging Travelclick's strong SaaS technology we will be able to better serve individual hotels with a more flexible platform and provide greater local resources to our hotel chain customers.  The more we learned about each other's organization, the clearer it became that together we bring more to our clients than either of us do on our own."

For years, hotel chains have worked closely with Rubicon to leverage competitive pricing and forward-looking demand data to improve their pricing and revenue management processes.  With Rubicon as part of Travelclick, the company can provide the hospitality industry the most complete business intelligence offering available.

"The Travelclick/Rubicon combination adds a whole new dimension of flexibility and usability to hotel business intelligence," said Christopher Cowdray, CEO of Dorchester Collection, a group of distinctive independent hotels. "Each Dorchester Collection property is unique within its respective market. The data and products that we will receive as a result of the combination of Travelclick and Rubicon will allow us to better compete in each market in which we do business."

Kutscher concluded, "Over the coming months, Tim will lead the combined Travelclick business intelligence team to roll out new products and services.  For the Demand Position product in particular, there is an opportunity for a broader range of hotels to contribute data, due to Travelclick's deep relationships with independent hotels. Today's acquisition is a win-win for both Rubicon and Travelclick's clients – better data, better technology and best-in-class service."

About Travelclick, Inc.

Travelclick (www.travelclick.com) is a leading provider of profitable revenue generating solutions for hoteliers worldwide. Travelclick offers hotels world-class reservation solutions, business intelligence products and comprehensive media and marketing solutions to help hotels grow their business. With local experts around the globe, we help more than 15,000 hotel clients in over 140 countries drive profitable room reservations through better revenue management decisions, proven reservation technology and innovative marketing.  Since 1999, Travelclick has helped hotels leverage the web to effectively navigate the complex global distribution landscape.  Travelclick has offices in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Barcelona, London, Dubai, Houston, Melbourne, Shanghai, and Tokyo. Follow us on www.twitter.com/travelclick and www.facebook.com/travelclick.

SOURCE Travelclick, Inc.