TripAdvisor's foray into Instant Booking for its hotel metasearch had been motoring along reasonably well until just a few weeks ago.
And then it signed an agreement to have the Priceline Group brands included in the process.
The TRIP share price went up by around a third over the course of that day (where it has largely remained ever since) and it would be fair to say that the agreement has ignited all manner of discussions around the concept of on-site booking within metasearch engines.
In short, Priceline Group's decision to work with TripAdvisor is, according to many observers, perhaps the tipping point in the still relatively short evolution of the model.
It would be fair to say that it was a fairly common talking point in the corridors outside of the WebinTravel conference in Singapore last week.
Executives from both companies have inevitably been very careful not to deviate from their respective company lines over the deal, but a few nuggets about the general concept emerged during a panel discussion on metasearch earlier in the week.
With a reasonable dash of understatement, Brian Schmidt, TripAdvisor's vice president for global CPC sales, says the company is now "flexing new muscles" when it comes to its push to expand Instant Booking.
But whilst there was obviously some kind of masterplan to head down this route, Schmidt admits that the company is "learning" from the process of adding new partners.
In particular, he says, those working on the integration are "understanding the importance of brand" for the partners.
As a result the design of the results has altered to make the brand names more central to the display.
Online travel agencies and suppliers have "invested millions" in their own branding, Schmidt says, so tweaks were made to ensure a company's branding is more prominent in the results.
NB:TripAdvisor book now image via Shutterstock.