Articles tagged “lawsuits”

It is relatively rare that contract disputes between online travel agencies and airlines reach the public domain unless they are at a breaking point. We'll undoubtedly hear more about this soon.

There's no guarantee that the European Commission will act on this complaint but it shows that the online travel industry is still very annoyed with Lufthansa's actions.

Online travel agencies have been vehemently opposed to detailing the components of the taxes and fees they collect on prepaid hotel bookings because it would expose the wholesale rates they obtain from hotels and the markups that the booking sites impose. This lawsuit could potentially impose changes in Expedia's financial relationship with its affiliates.

The Miami settlement could have broader implications for Airbnb when other big landlords take it to task for hosts violating their apartment leases. And, it isn't a bad thing for Airbnb to resolve its issues with various regulators and to erase some of these legal irritants when it will likely solicit investors for a 2019 initial public offering.

This year Lufthansa made a series of small moves that, when looked at together, reveal a doubling down on its multi-front strategy to pressure Amadeus, Travelport, and especially Sabre to conform more to its preferred airline distribution practices. Connect the dots, and it looks like a low-grade war.

In settling this lawsuit, Amadeus doesn't admit to any wrongdoing or violations of antitrust law. Along with Travelport, Amadeus agreed to have its team engage in antitrust compliance training.

Here's how not to deal with skyrocketing labor costs: shaving time off of paychecks, letting uniform expenses go unreimbursed, and skipping out on shift breaks.

Ryanair says it gets 99 percent of its bookings from its website in a distribution model that has some parallels to how Southwest Airlines does business. Expedia doesn't offer Southwest's flights to consumers, but apparently thinks it can get away with scraping the website of a foreign airline, Ryanair.com.

From a financial standpoint, President Trump's executive order temporarily blocking travel to the U.S. from the seven countries is going to cost money for Expedia and other travel companies. That's just the dollars and euros part of it -- the moral and legal issues loom large, as well.

We pause our argument for the moment that the Priceline Group should be rebranded as the Booking.com Group because of the latter's wider brand recognition. The Priceline Group, which actually has no plans under way to rebrand, needs to get this messy Booking.com trademark issue cleared up first. It seems like such a stretch that one of the largest travel companies in the world can't get its trademark approved.