GIATA Acquires SMARTSEER to Deliver Next-Generation Personalized Travel Experiences

GIATA doubles down on AI personalization with SMARTSEER, powering 50M+ monthly decisions for 20K+ clients in 80+ countries and boosting its global team to 110.

 

Berlin, 11 September 2025 – GIATA Group, the world’s leading provider of verified hotel data and content, has acquired SMARTSEER, a fast-growing AI decisioning platform recognized for its award-winning innovation.

 

The acquisition combines GIATA’s unmatched data, content and mapping expertise with SMARTSEER’s intelligent personalisation technology to deliver the much needed truly personalized travel experiences that the industry is currently unable to fulfil.

 

By uniting billions of data points – from GIATA hotel data, content and mapping to behavioural signals – with SMARTSEER’s AI-driven models, travel companies such as OTAs, tour operators, bed banks, and GDS providers will be able to deliver hyper-relevant offers, recommendations and user experiences at scale. As a result, for GIATA and SMARTSEER clients every interaction will become context-aware and traveller-centric, moving the sales & marketing from “one-size-fits-all” to the long-promised “audience of one”.

 

Joining GIATA marks the latest phase for SMARTSEER, which was founded in 2023 by Melanie Sickenberger, Andy Owen Jones and Stefan Henss.  The toolset is an evolution of the award winning BD4 Group platform.   BD4 Group had also been founded by Andy Owen Jones and Melanie Sickenberger – both of whom will join the GIATA leadership team. The SMARTSEER brand will operate as an independent company within the group.

 

“For over three decades, GIATA has been the trusted engine behind global travel technology and has established industry standards by working with over 20,000 clients in 80 countries,” said Mathis Boldt, CEO of GIATA Group. “But today, travellers demand more, – they want experiences that feel designed for them. By integrating SMARTSEER’s AI decisioning engine with GIATA’s rich data ecosystem, travel businesses will be able to anticipate traveller needs with unmatched precision, delivering seamless, personalized journeys across every digital touchpoint.”

 

Boldt continued: “SMARTSEER impressed us with its cutting-edge AI-driven decisioning platform and strong customer focus. With so much hype around AI, we wanted a partner who is actually delivering proven capabilities and ROI rather than just promising it. This is about more than strengthening our portfolio – it’s about shaping the future of travel technology together. We’re thrilled to welcome SMARTSEER to the GIATA Group.”

 

“We have been delighted to serve some of the leading travel companies in Europe.” said Andy Owen-Jones, Co-Founder and Co-Managing Director of SMARTSEER. “Each day we help our clients to tailor their offer by making millions of decisions to find the right product while balancing commercial goals. With GIATA’s global reach, scaling expertise, and unrivalled hotel data, we can realise our vision more quickly. Together, we will use AI and verified data to innovate and make the travel industry work far more effectively.”

 

About GIATA

Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Berlin, GIATA is the world’s leading provider of verified hotel data and content for the global travel industry. With one of the largest structured hotel databases worldwide, GIATA empowers thousands of travel companies — including leading OTAs, tour operators, bed banks, and GDS providers — to distribute consistent, high-quality hotel information across all sales and distribution channels.

GIATA’s mission is to empower the travel industry with accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date accommodation data, enabling businesses and travellers to make informed decisions with confidence. This is achieved by leveraging cutting-edge technology, maintaining rigorous data standards, and fostering partnerships that prioritize transparency, reliability, and innovation.

The GIATA Group is a Odewald KMU portfolio company,  led by CEO Mathis Boldt and COO Michael Rehs. More information can be found at www.giata.com/en/

About SMARTSEER

SMARTSEER is a Frankfurt-based AI-decisioning platform specializing in high-speed profiling and decision automation for the travel sector.   

All products use cutting-edge artificial intelligence to interpret user behaviour into real time scores, enabling faster, smarter, and more relevant decision-making at scale.  SMARTSEER enables clients to take hundreds of automated decisions every second to optimise their customer offering.

SMARTSEER was founded in 2023 by managing directors Andy Owen Jones and Melanie Sickenberger together with CTO Stefan Henss.  The SMARTSEER platform is a massive array of tuned models trained on huge numbers of client journeys.  It is designed to infer the next best action and backed up with a high-speed architecture purpose built for the travel industry.   The team was named Travolution Technology Team of the Year 2024.

More information can be found at www.smartseer.com