OTA Insight Buys Transparent to Offer Both Hotel and Vacation Rental Data
Photo Caption: A three-bedroom home managed by Stay Duvet as a vacation rental in Charleston, South Carolina. The property manager uses tools from the startup Transparent. Source: Stay Duvet.
Skift Take
Here's yet another sign that alternative accommodations are becoming sophisticated businesses just like hotels.
OTA Insight, a London-based startup that helps hotels track competitors' rates, said Thursday it is acquiring Madrid-based Transparent, which gathers business intelligence on vacation rentals and short-term rentals.
The companies didn't disclose the merger terms, which they said they had already completed within regulatory rules. In November, OTA Insight secured $80 million in funding from private equity firm Spectrum.
"OTA Insight acquiring Transparent highlights the continued convergence of the hotel and short-term rental sectors," said Wouter Geerts, senior research analyst at Skift Research.
"With around 55,000 hotels using OTA Insight's rate shopping and market intelligence tools [according to the Skift Research Hotel Tech Benchmark], the company is a leader in providing market data and intelligence to hotel operators," Geerts said.
Transparent, for its part, aggregates and cleans up data on more than 35 million vacation rental and
