NEW YORK CITY Hotel e-marketing firm Travelclick has acquired Rubicon—one of the hotel industry’s biggest providers of business intelligence—creating what could prove to be a very powerful travel data technology company.
“The combination of Travelclick and Rubicon enables us to do more for our hospitality clients, helping them to make better, more informed decisions,” says Travelclick CEO Larry Kutscher. “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.”
Tim Hart, former CEO of Rubicon, will become executive vice president and head of Travelclick’s business intelligence division. He will report to Kutscher.
“By leveraging Travelclick’s strong SaaS (software as a service) 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,” Hart says. “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 companies have used Rubicon’s forward-looking data to leverage competitive pricing and improve revenue management processes. With Rubicon as part of Travelclick, the company can provide the hospitality with a comprehensive business intelligence offering.
“The Travelclick/Rubicon combination adds a whole new dimension of flexibility and usability to hotel business intelligence,” says Christopher Cowdray, CEO of Dorchester Collection. “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.”