Skift Take
Line Travel Japan’s new rewards initiative is a neat, innovative way to upsell online travel agencies, but it represents a whole lot more. It's a sign of loftier metasearch ambitions to own customers in a fight against common enemies — the lowest-price quandary and the Google behemoth.
Industry observers have said it for years: Eventually, travel metasearch will evolve beyond being price comparison and click-through sites. The change is already nipping at the heels of the old metasearch model with Google tightening its grip around the travel search-and-refer game and with online travel agencies under pressure to reform “lowest-price” practices.
Lowest-price marketing may be coming to a head. Within the past two months, consumer and competition watchdogs from Singapore, Japan, and the United Kingdom have called on travel booking sites to clean up their act on misleading price and discount displays. Japan’s Fair Trade Commission earlier in the year probed major online travel agencies (OTAs) alleged to have pressured hotels into offering their lowest prices on their platforms, among other practices.
In the increasingly murky and crowded realm of price comparison, Line Travel Japan aims to differentiate itself by launching its own loyalty points system, on top of the points awarded by the online travel company the consumer books with.
CEO Kei Shibata believes Line Travel is the first metasearch site in the world to have its own points rebate initiative. TripAdvisor in August said it’s working on a new loyalty program for the first time, as Skift had reported.
At the time of launch, participating OTAs and suppliers include Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb, Jalpak (Japan Airlines), Trip.com, Agoda, Ikyu.com (Yahoo Travel), and Trave
