Metasearch engine Skyscanner has been purchased by Ctrip, China's largest online travel agency.
On the face of it, this looks more like a business story and one focused on European companies increasingly being owned by companies based in other countries, or even continents. Look more closely and you might get a good idea of what the business and tech gurus think is the likely future of travel booking. And maybe even travel management.
Skyscanner has been the darling of travel metasearch. Consumers can easily compare the available market inventory from a wide range of different sources and then decide on the most suitable option for them, which in the consumer world is usually the cheapest fare.
Ctrip is a Chinese provider of travel services including accommodation booking, transportation ticketing, package tours and corporate travel management. Last year it became responsible for 80% of China's online travel bookings as a consequence of its purchase of Qunar, a web and mobile travel search engine.
Ctrip has been careful to position itself as a solution for both leisure and business travellers and should do well as a service provider for the growing bleisure market. It should also do well in the emerging inbound and outbound Chinese leisure and business travel markets.
But there's more.
Gareth Williams, Skyscanner CEO, is known to be keen on the potential of automated bots and flight booking. He is also on the record as saying that travel needs even more technology and a more traveller-centric approach.
Ctrip is clearly ambitious and wants to become the dominant travel distributor and booking solution not only for China but for South East Asia. Skyscanner is a big force in Europe.
Everyone agrees that what companies want from their TMC is changing but changing to a company that has travel market expertise and can offer service doesn't necessarily mean that that service has to be fully high touch — much can be done with machine learning and bots. And being traveller-centric also can be done in a personalised and automated way.
The service also doesn't have to be delivered by a 'local' agent. Smaller travel agents have been being regularly discarded in favour of more international TMCs. There is no reason that those TMCs have to be headquartered in the US or Europe.
If a TMC can offer a traveller-centric service and a low-cost solution that takes account of its knowledge of the customer and the customer's taste with the inventory available, it can be based in a different part of the world and approach business in a very different way.
Those interested in the future form of the TMC should watch mergers such as that of Ctrip and Skyscanner closely.