Sabre Holdings has announced its acquisition of European discount travel site lastminute.com in a deal valued up to $1.08 billion, reports Internet News. Lastminute.com offered a rival service to Sabre's Travelocity Europe portal. Travelocity is expected to position lastminute.com as a lead brand, but multiple brands will likely be maintained. The acquisition comes at a time of a booming online travel business, though more for travel search engines than online travel agencies.

According to a recent report by Hitwise, the top five online travel agencies (Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Yahoo Travel and CheapTickets) increased their share of web visitors 11.3 percent over the past six months.

However, the top four travel search engines increased their share 304 percent.