One area of the Frommer's business that got little mention during the acquisition by Google last summer was the travel content service for other brands.
Whilst most of the attention was focused on what Google was going to do with all the destination content and guidebooks, dozens of travel brands and websites in other industry verticals (such as the media) were also wondering what was going to happen to their content partnership.
Frommer's Unlimited provides licensed destination guides for desktops and mobile, event listings, images, cruise guides and hotel property descriptions to countless web brands, as well having a consultancy and customer publishing unit.
Partners range from the likes of Expedia and Hotels.com to British Airways, KLM, Mastercard, MSN Travel and the New York Times Travel section.
Six months on from the acquisition, and with still plenty of focus on the Google end of things, it turns out Frommer's Unlimited is being scaled back as a unit.
The primary reason is that the acquisition was only a content play and the underlying technology for the B2B division was not included in the transaction and thererfore remained with Wiley, the previous owner which had spent at least six months trying to offload its travel interests.
This has left dozens of partner sites in a bit of a quandary as their contracts with Frommer's Unlimited are not being renewed (some in April and the remainder by the end of the year) and they will therefore be without the destination information which many have used and valued as part of their SEO and online content strategy for years.
Two such brands, metasearch sites Kayak and TravelSupermarket, are known to be either no longer using Frommer's material or making alternative arrangements.
Although a question mark remains as to whether new owner Google will eventually pick up the baton and continue the B2B content services in the future, letting the existing contracts expire and the gradual realisation as to what Google is doing with destination information appears to suggest otherwise.
This, therefore, not only leaves dozens (between 55 and 60 clients this time last year) of websites needing a new supplier of travel content but an opportunity for Frommer's-type providers to perhaps capitalise.
Obvious big-name candidates which could supply such content on a global scale to B2B partners include Lonely Planet, Rough Guides and Fodors, with obviously a myriad of other, lower profile content brands such as ArrivalGuides and Columbus also probably keen to get in on the act.
NB: Google has consistently refused to comment on anything relating to its acquisition of Frommer's or, in reference to our latest query, the B2B services.