Sabre Holdings
has acquired online travel community IgoUgo.com
and launched a travel keyword search engine on the newly acquired site.  IgoUgo is built entirely around the concept of real travelers sharing honest opinions, with 350,000 members who communicate by writing and posting travel journals and photos of their experiences.

IgoUgo’s new search engine improves the relevancy of keyword search results when the consumer is conducting research and planning on the Web. 

The feature removes the clutter of responses that are not travel-related associated with the general search engines like Google and MSN.  As an example, when a consumer enters the keyword “java,” the search engine only returns travel-related Web results for Java, Indonesia, and filters out the thousands of results related to coffee or the computer operating system. 

“Developing a keyword search engine specifically for travel is a natural extension of Sabre’s 30-plus years of experience in travel search technology,” said Eric J. Speck, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Sabre Holdings.  “Sabre Holdings plans to enhance the capabilities of the keyword search engine and then combine it with the plethora of real-time information in the Sabre system to enhance offerings from the company’s other businesses.”

A recently published report from market analyst Jupiter Research predicts significant growth in keyword search.  The report is based on findings that 79 percent of the $2.6 billion spent on paid search in the last year in the U.S. fits into four categories - retail, financial services, media and entertainment, and travel.

Speck revealed that Sabre plans to add a ‘Travel Experts’ feature to IgoUgo which will provide consumers with additional travel insight from travel agents with destination-specific qualifications.

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