Re:Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in ...
by listenallyall on Tuesday July 23, 2024 @12:57PM
(#41048281)
The most likely explanation for shutting it down was the enormous cost of driving traffic to the site. After 20+ years of habits, it's hard to tell people about a new site, let alone get them to use it regularly. And given that hotel room prices change all the time, it's difficult to even prove they have the lowest prices.
Plus it is hard to get competitors to work together on something. Orbitz was started by a partnership of airlines. It IPO'd and then was acquired by a private company, all within 3 years after launching. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbitz
In fact they did, called roomkey.com Hilton/ihg/marriott/hyatt/choice/wyndham options could all be searched simultaneously, and you get the lowest price and the hotels avoid paying commission to Expedia and booking.
But they shut it down. I wonder if it was because hotels are usually franchised, and the brands get a percentage of revenue as royalty, so they don’t care about commissions the hotel operators have to pay. So they decide to price discriminate via the travel agents.
It should be similarly trivial for the airlines and car rental companies to get together and offer the same website. Isn’t it better to give customers a 7% discount rather than give booking/Expedia 15%?
Obviously, reality is different so there must be a reason. I’m guessing the gains from price discrimination are more than the losses from commissions.