Property website operator, Rightmove, has sold its holiday rental properties site, Holiday Lettings, to TripAdvisor, the travel website operator. The deal for the country’s largest independent holiday lettings site was announced last week and an undisclosed sum has been paid for the company. Rightmove is a subsidiary of travel giants Expedia.

In March 2007, Rightmove purchased a just over two-thirds stake in Holiday Lettings. It said recently that it intended to declare in its half-yearly report that the company is a discontinued operation.

By securing Holiday Lettings the TripAdvisor Media Group will increase its number of travel brands to 17. The website operator said that Holiday Lettings would remain an independent site and would continue to be run by the current management and the sites original founders. Holiday Lettings is based in Oxford where it was started in 1999.

Currently, Holiday Lettings advertises around 40,000 properties around the globe available for short term lease. The company operates it service on behalf of lettings agents, property managers and private owners. According to the site it can access properties for customers across 116 countries and these properties range from villas and apartments to yurts and windmills. 25 million people visit Holiday Lettings every year according to the company’s press release.

In 2008, TripAdvisor purchased a majority stake in FlipKey based in the US. The following year the site started to offer holiday rentals. According to experts, TripAdvisor’s acquisitions seem to indicate that it is looking to go head to head with HomeAway, the holiday rental giants.