Battle Escalates Between Airlines and Online Agents

[Flashback]

Battle Escalates Between Airlines and Online Agents - Slashdot

"The Epoch Times reports that online travel booking giant Expedia has removed American Airlines from its travel website over disagreements with American's fee structure in the latest incident in an escalating battle between airlines and online travel agents. Although American gets roughly two-thirds of its revenues from third-party travel agents like Expedia, American has been looking for online agents to cut their fees as one way to lower fares — something that Expedia was not prepared to do. Expedia released a statement that American's action 'will result in higher costs and reduced transparency for consumers, making it difficult to compare ticket prices and options with offerings by other airlines,' while American urged customers to book directly on American's website for the lowest prices. Meanwhile Google is waiting in the wings with its recent proposal to purchase ITA Software, the developer of the Internet's leading technology to compare flights fares. 'Though 49 percent of travelers purchase travel online, it is still time consuming and slow to search for travel options online,' says a statement from Google, defending the ITA acquisition which is being opposed by Microsoft on anti-trust grounds. 'We plan to work with ITA to create a new, easier way for users to find better flight information online.'"

 

[anat0l]

The battle intensifies...manifold:

Sabre ramps up online travel battle with American - Yahoo! Finance

American Airlines was already in a fight with two relatively small online ticket sellers when on Wednesday it found itself in the ring with an 800-pound gorilla.

Sabre Holdings, a major distributor of airline tickets to coveted business travelers, said it would immediately make American fares harder to find in its displays. It's also dropping a discount on the fees the airline pays when its tickets are sold. Sabre plans to end its contract with American in August, although it expects the parties to discuss a new agreement between now and then.

American got the attention of the travel business last month by pulling flight listings from online travel site Orbitz when they couldn't agree on a new contract. Expedia then dropped American flight listings. The two competitors were on the same side in resisting American's attempts to force them to get flight and fare information directly from it instead of through so-called global distribution services like Sabre.

Orbitz and Expedia are one kettle of fish, but Sabre is a huge one.


Mods: wasn't sure whether it was worth splitting this off as a separate topic...

 

[samh004]

Sabre Holdings, a major distributor of airline tickets to coveted business travelers, said it would immediately make American fares harder to find in its displays.

I know it’s America, but I’d have thought they had to be impartial and not favour any particular brand. I’m guessing that’s not the case though. Perhaps AA will move to Amadeus

 

[serfty]

"Sabre Holdings"?

SABRE was originally developed for AA.

More here: Sabre (computer system) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Irony huh?

PS: Sabre Holdings own Trevalocity ...

 

[Travel Guru]

American are quickly running out of options with GDS providers, they've already p****d off Galileo agents by charging agents a per sector fee to recover what it says are price hikes by Galileo which is making it a PITA selling AA being a Galileo user.

Be interesting to see where this one ends.

TG