ITA Software picked up Student Universe.com as a client, its first new customer, albeit a relatively small one, since Google announced July 1 its intent to buy ITA.
The Waltham, Mass.-based travel agency, which negotiates private student fares from airlines and sells flights on a retail basis, as well, will use ITA's QPX solution for low-fare search pricing and shopping.
Sabre had been providing inventory and search functionality to StudentUniverse, which says it's the largest student online travel agency in the U.S., and ITA has taken over the search role, says Atle Skalleberg, the travel agency's executive vice president.
"ITA will do a very big part of our volume when it comes to searching, pricing and shopping," Skalleberg says.
He adds that StudentUniverse already had been negotiating with ITA before the Google acquisition announcement in July, but signed an agreement with ITA only recently.
Skalleberg declined to specify the length of the deal with ITA.
Asked whether ITA had given StudentUniverse assurances about getting ongoing access to the latest QPX enhancements if the Google deal closes, Skalleberg says the company would not have signed the deal unless it felt comfortable that ITA technology would continue to support the travel agency's future development.
Skalleberg says the ITA implementation was somewhat complex because the vast majority of the student travel agency's inventory is private fares.
ITA says it completed QPX implementation for StudentUniverse in 25 days.