You can tell it’s the merry time of the year because there’s a lot of buying going on – Priceline buys Kayak; MakeMyTrip buys Hoteltravel; ZUJI’s suitor turned out to be Webjet and not Wotif as the rumour mill had been suggesting; Etihad saves Kingfisher; and SIA sells its stake in Virgin Atlantic to Delta Airlines.

And you bet there’ll be lots more to come as travel players take positions to either consolidate their lead or expand their reach and scale to ensure they come up on top in a new year that will be bound to be full of as many surprises as this year was.

Priceline buying Kayak, described as “unexpected but undeniably brilliant by PhoCusWright in this article, is being watched with great interest in APAC, not least by the travel meta-search players all striving to scale and/or remain relevant in a space where Google is rearing its mighty head.

Could this move be the harbinger of more acquisitions by Priceline in the search space in APAC? If so, you can bet there’ll be lots of interested parties ready to talk with Glenn Fogel, head of worldwide strategy and planning for The Priceline Group (left).

It’s no secret that the group has an investment fund ready to strike in a region where its business is booming and has great upside for growth. With competition intensifying and the markets shifting – MakeMyTrip was the first OTA to strike out into search with the acquisition of ixigo – Priceline knows it needs to make a bold move in APAC to solidify its lead.

But the meta-search space is a tough nut to crack – Wego, the Singapore-based enterprise, has been going at it for more than seven years and it’s hard, just like with the OTA business, to build a true regional brand that is equally strong across all markets in Asia. So it’s had to dig into local as well with several sites now launched in-markets such as Indonesia and Middle East.

A new report by PhoCusWright underscores the challenges in meta-search. According to PhoCusWright’s U.S. Online Travel Traffic Report, metasearch visits in 1H12 increased year-over-year 13%, a growth rate that largely excludes the burgeoning mobile channel. Yet metasearch contributed just 2% of the upstream visits to air suppliers and a paltry 1% of the visits to hotel suppliers in 1H12, both flat year-over-year. In contrast, OTAs contributed 9% and 6% of the traffic going to airlines and hotels, respectively, in 1H12 They have however boosted their share of upstream traffic to OTAs, primarily from lead generation (i.e., a simultaneous search run in a new window) rather than deep-linked booking referrals. Six percent of upstream visits to the OTA category came from metasearch in 1H12, up from 5% in 1H11.

Meanwhile, in a nod to the competition it could face from the likes of Google, Japanese travel search site, travel.jp, has signed partnership agreements with international OTAs to expand its content and is also adding a layer of curated content to strengthen its media model.

What I find interesting with the Priceline acquisition of Kayak is perhaps its nod to a new kind of media model that has emerged as opposed to a pure transaction play. Look at TripAdvisor, a media model that’s turned into a media monster.

With its acquisition of ZUJI for A$23 million, Webjet is clearly hoping that will give it the platform to take on Asia. Webjet managing director John Guscic said the acquisition coincided with the changing nature of aviation in the Asia-Pacific region, and the deal would help to fast-track the development of Webjet’s global hotel contracting and online hotel distribution strategies.

“The acquisition of Zuji represents a unique opportunity to substantially expand Webjet’s marketing footprint, particularly in the growth markets of Asia,” Guscic said in this article. “In conjunction with our recent innovations in distribution technology, we see significant opportunities to deepen our market footprint in an environment where the provisioning of online travel is rapidly transcending traditional desktop access and becoming part of the fundamental travellers’ journey and experience.”

So watch Webjet and Wotif as the two Australian-based businesses go head to head in Asia in 2013 – Wotif, on its part, decided to acquire the experience and expertise of Scott Blume, who interestingly launched ZUJI and therefore should know its strengths and weaknesses well – but count on ZUJI being a very different animal with this new and committed owner unlike its previous owner, Sabre, to whom it never really belonged or fitted.

RajaKamar International, the Indonesian hotel portal, launched by Blume, now finds itself without a head – but don’t discount local players in 2013. Their resources and networks are considerable in markets like Indonesia, India and China.

Guscic is spot-on with his comment about “the changing nature of aviation in the Asia Pacific region”. That more than anything else is the space to watch because from that, all things flow.

The AirAsia group which flies 18 million passengers a year is now bigger than Singapore Airlines at 16-17 million. The Centre for Aviation Sydney says that the group, led by Datuk Tony Fernandes, will be the biggest airline in Asia in three years time.

Speaking of Fernandes, the last time I saw him was at the Singapore Formula 1 where he was championing his Caterham team and I had the opportunity to go behind the scenes and I watched in fascination at the technology, precision and hard work that went into getting the cars ready for the race. And soon as I brought out my camera, my knuckles got rapped. “Top secret,” I was told.

It’s a bit like what’s happening now as we approach year end – companies are doing their posturings, preparations and positionings – much of it top secret – to ensure they hit the ground running in 2013.

May the best team win.