UpTake Networks, Inc announced today that it has acquired RealTravel, Inc, a social hotel recommendation site.

UpTake Networks, Inc. owns UpTake.com, a semantic search engine designed to help travelers research and decide where to go, where to stay and what to do. With the addition of Real Travel, UpTake Networks intends to accelerate their investment in the online travel research experience and drive more free, qualified leads back to travel sites.

"We acquired Real Travel because their product vision and approach are similar to UpTake.com, they have a highly talented team and they have a global footprint covering more than 200 countries," said Yen Lee, President and Co-founder of UpTake. "We intend to continue to operate RealTravel.com as an independent site and to give the Real Travel team the resources to accelerate their plans. Given UpTake's strong organic growth, leadership team and finances, it makes sense for UpTake to make acquisitions, which is why we courted Real Travel."

"We had a number of suitors and ultimately elected to join UpTake Networks for several reasons. First, UpTake's vision to develop semantic technology that analyzes the wisdom of the crowd from across the internet to enable consumers to more easily research hotels and activities based on their trip type. Second, UpTake's commitment to making sure their approach adds value to the travel industry by providing travel sites free branding and leads. Finally, UpTake is already the largest independent travel research site and is in an excellent financial position with proven and stable investors," says Ken Leeder, CEO & Founder of Real Travel.

Apparently the two companies also share a lot of common technology and expertise. Both companies use similar underlying platforms including the increasing popular Ruby programming language to develop their search technologies.

Stephen A. Joyce has been working as a travel & tourism technology consultant since 1995. In 2005 Stephen and his company, Sentias Software Corp., began development on Rezgo.com, a next generation Web 2.0 tour and activity booking engine for SME travel suppliers and tour operators.

In June of 2007, Rezgo.com was officially released and now boasts a user base of 900+ companies. Stephen is also very active in fostering tourism technology and is co-chair of the Board of Directors of the OpenTravel Alliance, a non-profit organization whose mandate is to develop and foster messaging standards for travel e-distribution.

http://tourismtechnology.rezgo.com