With so much attention on meta-search lately, and talk of some players moving down the purchase path, one company intends to remain focused on what it does well – the B2B affiliate space and hotels. This despite it taking out ads in Australia to promote its consumer facing brand.

I caught up with Hichame Assi, chief operating officer of Australia-based Hotelscombined, recently to find out their plans to evolve the model and if they will also be expanding into Asia like everyone else.

Q: How has Hotelscombined.com been doing the past 12 months? What have you rolled out and what progress has been made?

Our user and revenue numbers have continued growing by a steady rate of around 100% and we’ve continued to form mutually beneficial partnerships with affiliates and suppliers across the globe. We’ve also launched in 15 additional languages including Thai, Indonesian, Bahasa Malay, Vietnamese and Tagalog, have continued to build upon user experience design and have launched new mobile app products.

Q: What are your plans for the next 12 months? Will you stay firmly in the B2B affiliate model or will you expand the B2C offering given how hot meta search has become lately with Kayak buying Priceline and Expedia buying Trivago?

We will continue to offer innovative solutions to partners and B2B will remain our main focus. Our business model has proved successful over the years precisely because of the reciprocal relationships we’ve held with our partners and affiliates, but there is still a lot more we can do in this area.

Q: What are the opportunities for a company like hotelscombined that has been playing in hotel meta search for 7 years now?

We believe that there is still work to be done on making hotel search and discovery more optimal and efficient. As such we remain quite focused on delivering the best possible service to our partners and users and we will continue to focus on hotels and other accommodation types as this is where our expertise lies.

Q: With the growth in Asia, are you looking to expand your business more in the region and how do you intend to do that? Where do you intend to open offices and what would their role be?

Asia is certainly an interesting market for us because of its diverse mix of mature and emerging markets. China is an obvious one we are considering strongly, but other markets from mature Japan to emerging Indonesia and fledgling Vietnam, also pose some interesting opportunities over the next couple of years.

We believe in localisation and will evaluate each market individually to determine its requirements for local presence. One of the keys to our penetration of new markets involves integrating local OTA partners and we’ve progressed well thus far with this method.

Q: Meta search seems to be going down the purchase path – eg Kayak – and TripAdvisor is also morphing into meta. The space is getting competitive and changing. How is Hotelscombined responding to these changes?

The events over the last year are all testaments to the high value of meta search. We’ve seen more and more business owners recognizing the benefits of price comparison for their users. Ultimately, that’s why we’ll remain focused on offering partners the best neutral hotel meta search technology – one that is good for their users and at the same time, performs better commercially for the partner.