Online travel agency Travelstart has acquired social seating specialist Satisfly for an undisclosed sum.
The Cape Town-based OTA says the acquisition will enable it to target customers with personalised offers or as it puts it "create more meaningful experiences for customers through social data."
The company now plans to enable social logins on its sites while the social intelligence specialist is already developing mobile applications for Travelstart.
Satisfly founder Sergio Mello becomes head of innovation for the OTA while retaining his role of chief executive of Satisfly and the brand will remain.
Travelstart founder Stephan Ekbergh says:
"Satisfly’s technology will allow us to make sense of our immense social data. Going forward, we will know where our customers normally want to go even before they ask, giving us the ability to cut through the clutter and provide them with personalised offers."
Satisfly was one of the first players to emerge announcing a partnership with Air Baltic more than three years ago. The move followed KLM's Meet & Seat concept which put passengers rather than airlines in control.
Others also came to the field including SeatID which announced a partnership with Hot Hotels just over a year ago and more recently unveiled a deal with Concur enabling business travellers to use their social media profiles to get notifications on who else is travelling from their networks.
NB: Social media image via Shutterstock.