Airline Industry Study Defends Orbitz Project

Published: 16 March 2001 y., Friday
"New entrants in travel distribution are being met with substantial opposition from the old guard and from leaders in the online travel marketplace," the report says. "More specifically, the agency community is opposing consumer-direct distribution by travel suppliers, and in particular, attempts to aggregate multiple suppliers onto a single site." Published by Global Aviation Associates, the report accuses the travel-booking industry of mounting a concerted and well-funded lobbying push against Orbitz, in order to protect its profit margins. The report "does restate the idea that Orbitz is bringing some needed competition" to the industry, Orbitz spokesperson Stacey Spencer said today. But travel agents haven't been the only Orbitz detractors. Since news of the airline industry joint Internet venture first surfaced in 1999, consumer advocates, travel industry groups and regulators have expressed concern about the proposed project. A collaborative effort owned jointly by American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Continental Airlines, Northwest Airlines and United Airlines, Orbitz intends to offer a one-stop-shop for online ticketing. By obscuring the need for travel "middlemen" Orbitz could squeeze other competitors out of the market, Orbitz detractors contend. The Orbitz-funded report goes on to accuse operators of travel industry "global distribution systems" (including Travelocity.com owner Sabre Inc.) of maintaining artificially high ticket-booking prices, in a bid to pad their own profits. The underlying costs for running those systems, which coordinate ticket sales across huge networks, have dropped as prices for computer technology and telecommunications services have fallen. Still, prices associated with global distributions systems (GDS) actually have increased, the report said.
Šaltinis: Newsbytes
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.

Facebook Comments

New comment


Captcha

Associated articles

Intel to drive home chip-numbering system in May

In a move that will change how millions of consumers buy their PCs, Intel later this year will adopt a new system for differentiating its processors more »

Samsung zooms in on camera phones

Samsung is planning to launch in Europe a camera phone capable of taking pictures with a resolution of 2 million pixels more »

CeBit: Panasonic preps 1GB Secure Digital card

Panasonic announced on Friday that it plans to launch a 1GB Secure Digital card first in Japan in April more »

Hi-tech snapshots from Cebit

A snapshot of the gadgets on offer at the giant Cebit technology trade show. more »

Massive German sweep targets pirates

German authorities conducted raids on more than 750 locations on Tuesday and Thursday this week more »

Like It or Not, RFID Is Coming

Scott McGregor of Philips Semiconductor, the leader in radio frequency ID chips, says they'll change the world -- and not threaten privacy more »

CeBIT: the handset fan's heaven

Mobile handset fans must get a real kick out of CeBIT more »

BARCLAYS TRANSFERS ATM OPERATIONS TO WINCOR NIXDORF

The contract covers Barclays deposit devices, ATMs and statement printers, as well as the ATM network Helpdesk for Barclays branches more »

The market leader

Wincor Nixdorf - the new European market leader in ePOS systems more »

Europe closes in on Microsoft

If Microsoft is wondering how its antitrust case is faring in Europe, what happened yesterday in Brussels said it all more »