The demise of the Lowcost Travel Group in mid-July this year was one of the biggest travel company failures of recent years.
The decision to put the company into administration saw around 27,000 stranded in their resorts and a further 110,000 customers with pre-bookings faced missing out on or had to reorganise their summer trip.
Whilst there are lots of questions (and the inevitable hand-wringing in the UK from "traditional" travel agents) over Lowcost's apparently unconventional arrangements for protecting travellers through an overseas bonding scheme, there is still a job to be done by the company's administrators.
There are countless creditors still to be paid and the small matter of disposing of the company's remaining assets.
One important element in the complex world of online travel brands and how they use the web is, in this case, the search traffic hidden within the depths of the sitemap (destinations and countries) belonging to LowcostHolidays (the main consumer-facing brand).
To put it into perspective, there are (or were) almost 6,500 individual destination pages contained on LowcostHolidays - many of which, especially the popular locations, will have years of Google search engine juice pouring through them.
In contrast, many of the lesser-known destination pages will help capture the long tail of search traffic.
Although the LowcostHolidays website has officially been "dark" since the day it went into administration, apart from a holding page containing contact details for concerned travellers, those links to destination pages are still very much active in search engine results.
Tnooz can reveal competitor online travel agency LoveHolidays has struck a deal with the administrators to buy the digital assets (essentially the domain name) that previously belonged to LowcostHolidays.
The agreement has yet to be made public but LoveHolidays (TLabs here from 2012) has already set up a redirect on all of the 6,500 destination pages that sit within the LowcostHolidays site map.
Many of the original pages that have a LowcostHolidays URL in Google search engine results are now redirecting.
All of the pages automatically go to a similar landing page on LoveHolidays (such as cities or beach destinations), whilst others simply head over to the "holidays" channel on the younger OTA.
It is worth emphasising that LoveHolidays has ONLY bought the domain assets of the Lowcost Travel Group and NOT taken on any responsibility for the forward bookings made with LowcostHolidays leading up to its demise in July.
Nor will it be in any position to assist those customers looking for compensation from the failed LowcostHolidays business as a result of being stuck abroad in the middle of a trip when the company collapsed.
In short, this is a search engine optimisation play.
LoveHolidays CEO Al Francis confirmed to Tnooz this week that it has acquired "some of the digital infrastructure" from the administrators of LowcostHolidays.
It has also hired some of the customer experience staff from the company, "to allow LoveHolidays to continue with its successful growth trajectory".
Francis says LoveHolidays has no affiliation with Lowcost Travel Group or any of its subsidiaries.
Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
It is understood an update about the administration process is due to be made next week.
A statement from Smith & Williamson, appointed after the collapse, says:
"After Lowcost Travel Group Limited (and its subsidiaries) went into administration, we sought to sell the assets of the group.
"The realisation of a failed company’s assets to maximise the position for creditors is a standard part of an administration process. LoveHolidays – which is completely independent from Lowcost Travel Group – bought some of Lowcost Travel Group’s IT assets."
Meanwhile, SEO specialist website Sistrix did some analysis of when the switch may have occurred based on the visibility index of both brands in search engines results.
It illustrates the volume and scale of the domain assets that LoveHolidays has purchased.