UpTake, the leader in the online tourism industry, announced today the acquisition of Real Travel Inc, a social hotel recommendation site. The movement is intended to offer ‘qualified leads back to travel sites’.

Real Travel was chosen because of their capabilities of covering over 200 countries in terms of suggestions and reviews on itineraries, hotels and dining. According to Yen Lee, the president and co-founder of UpTake, Real Travel will be run as an independent site. Ken Leeder, CEO and founder of Real Travel explains the reasons for which they chose UpTake out of a series of suitors: ‘UpTake’s commitment to making sure their approach adds value to the travel industry by providing travel sites free branding and leads’ and the prestige and stability of UpTake on the market.

“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.”

At the moment, the travel industry experiences a blossoming period in terms of online solutions which have become more and more popular in the last years, search advertising having the greatest benefits. ITA, a travel software company, is said to be acquired by Google for a $700 million deal, again demonstrating the huge potential of travel-related searches on Google.  HomeAway is another travel startup that’s recently gained funding from Google Ventures.