European tour operating giant Thomas Cook is stirring things up again this week and talking about its plans to develop a major online travel agency to rival Expedia in Europe.
Now while such talk conveniently deflects attention away from its relegation from the London Stock Exchange's index of top 100 companies, chief executive Manny Fontenla-Novoa clearly means business, and details about how the company might achieve such a lofty ambition are emerging.
There are many reasons why Thomas Cook is considering the move to create an OTA in Europe, and there are certainly countless and complex issues to resolve.
NB: Despite Fontenla-Novoa's recent hints at the company's proposition, officials are still refusing this week to discuss any details.
One of the elements that is now being talked about openly by Fontenla-Novoa and featured in a Tnooz analysis of the project in April is the prospect of Thomas Cook snapping up an existing OTA to give it 1) immediate scale 2) solid and reliable technology 3) brand.
There is arguably less reason to buy simply for brand as Thomas Cook wants to keep the blue and yellow flag flying.
Scale is also less of a consideration given that Thomas Cook reaches far and wide across Europe already, so it is only a matter of converting customers to an OTA way of thinking that it needs to accomplish.
So it comes down to technology.
One of the ironies of Thomas Cook's plan to create an OTA to challenge Travelocity-owned Lastminute.com and Expedia is that it uses the latter's technology to power the dynamic packaging features on its existing website.
And then, of course, there is the BlueSky Technologies saga - a depressing and somewhat controversial affair which saw the Manchester-based tech firm go into administration half way through building a reservation system for the tour operator.
Clearly technology is a major factor for Thomas Cook.
There is no telling the size of the company's warchest for acquisitions, in spite of its humbling exit from the FTSE-100 this week, so there is simply a longlist of likely online travel agency contenders with recognised and respected (to varying degrees) technology platforms.
Update:
Another very strong contender coming through back channels is that of Holidycheck.
[Feel free to add more or disagree below]