3 ms·
this is great news! we badly need shake-up in online travel agency space - companies like Expedia and Orbitz haven't innovated at all for the last decade. Grea
by borism 16y ago
this is great news!
we badly need shake-up in online travel agency space - companies like Expedia and Orbitz haven't innovated at all for the last decade. Great to see that change is coming from AA, who were pioneers of online travel engines in the first place.
- andrewljohnson 16y agoUpvoted for having a view I hadn't thought to consider.
- notahacker 16y agoThis isn't so much to do with shaking the market up as a wrangle with Travelport over the size of their commissions. Refusing to play ball with the middleman isn't exactly innovation. It's not even a new step for American either; in the past they forced Kayak to remove Orbitz listings of AA flights. The consumer might theoretically gain from lower prices by only booking direct on AA's terms; in practice they lose the ability to easily compare/save on multi-flight itineraries across multiple unaffiliated carriers. I'm not the biggest fan of the current travel site model, but I think it's a little unfair to suggest they haven't innovated at all over that period; Orbitz didn't even exist at the start of the last decade. What American are doing is no more likely to stimulate innovation than Microsoft deciding on behalf of their OEM vendors what software options consumers should be offered.
- borism 16y agoin practice they lose the ability to easily compare/save on multi-flight itineraries across multiple unaffiliated carriers Why? There's still Kayak and ITA Software, which I am a big fan of and who're not going anywhere any time soon.