SKYSCANNER has agreed a deal for its technology to power flight search for Microsoft Travel.
That will see the Scottish company providing a white label service, where Skyscanner’s technology is embedded in a website but the owner still retains their own branding, in 31 markets for the technology and software giant’s MSN portal.
The agreement covers 17 languages and countries including the US, United Kingdom, Australia, India, Singapore, France, Hong Kong and Mexico.
Microsoft had been using Kayak, also a travel search engine, for around four years for its travel search function.
Edinburgh based Skyscanner, headed by chief executive Gareth Williams, said that it now provides its technology to more than 60 clients in a similar way to the Microsoft deal.
Those customers include Lonely Planet, Groupon, and Secret Escapes.
Hugh Aitken, director of business development at Skyscanner, said the Microsoft partnership is the biggest the company’s business services arm has done to date.
He said: “We have got real focus on growing the business to business products side of the business. MSN is our newest partner. It is a global deal for us and hugely important.”
Mr Aitken said the majority of the development work on the project had been done from Edinburgh with some support from Skyscanner’s Singapore office.
He said: “It has been a big integration as you can imagine and we have had a team dedicated to working on it.
“We have had to do a lot of development work to get our products right and the localisation right.”
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