Please tell me what Metasearch means

Quite possibly there is a Greek or Latin term that explains the background to the word 'Meta', but that escapes us for the moment. What we can tell you is that in the Online Booking Industry a MetaSeach company (HotelsCombined, Trivago etc) presents room prices gathered or 'scraped' from the Online Travel Agents (OTA's) such as Hotels.com, Booking.com etc. At present hotels cannot sign or contract directly with these companies to sell their inventory.

Hotels of course would kill to sell inventory from their own booking engines alongside the OTA's (the so called 'level playing field'), and it would appear that Metasearch companies are slowly opening their systems to allow Booking Engine to supply rooms, but once this is done it remains to be seen if the hotels will make the necessary investment to have their rates display alongside the OTA's.