Everything You Wanted to Know About the Hotel Industry’s Gripes Against OTAs
Photo Credit: The fight between hotels and OTAs will be a long and tiring. Flickr / Nana B Agyei
Skift Take
The direct booking wars will not be fought by laying out the evidence to parliamentary committees, but in the hearts of consumers. Still, the arguments and the evidence are definitely worth reading
The conflict between hospitality brands and the online travel agencies that sell their products is in full bloom as we head into the summer of 2016, and it will only get more ferocious as the year progresses.
We said as much in our 2016 Megatrends Forecast magazine earlier this year.
Now a European Union Committee has come out with lengthy report on what it calls "Online Platforms and the Digital Single Market", which includes detailed testimonies by various online and digital players across Europe on the pros and cons of going single market for digital businesses across the European Union countries. The report is the end of an "investigation" (read: testimonies) on how the largest online platforms use their market power and whether the current regulatory environment remains "fit for purpose."
As part of that, online travel was a key part of this process, and players like Airbnb, TripAdvisor, Skyscanner, and British Hospitality Association also testified. One testimony particu
