Sunday, Jul 6, 2008
Do Web sites that sell plane tickets favor some airlines over others? Should we even care?
Oct 27, 2000 | I couldn't go to sleep last night because I kept picturing a trio of seminaked, big-bellied sumo wrestlers grappling with each other in a steaming, muddy morass.
That's what I get for plunging too far into the latest battle in the ongoing online airfare wars.
It started early this month, when Consumer Reports Travel Letter, a respected watchdog publication, stated in its cover story that the four main online air booking sites are guilty of shoddy service. "The Internet is an exciting new tool, but it's no more likely to garner you the best airfare than a low-tech telephone ... Travel sites don't easily, fairly and thoroughly deliver" the lowest available fares and the full range of flight options, wrote CRTL.
Before reaching these conclusions, the publication compared the performance of the four main online booking sites -- Travelocity, Expedia, Lowestfare and Cheap Tickets -- with Apollo Galileo, one of the four standard computer reservation systems that virtually all travel agents use to get their flight information and to book their flights.
The editors found the online sites deficient in a number of areas. Each site manifested at least two of four problems: lack of sensible itineraries, reordering of flight information, difficult-to-navigate features and unavailability of flight listings. The comparison also turned up "disturbing evidence" that Web agencies bias their listings toward carriers with which they have special financial relationships, according to CRTL's editors.
Orbitz -- a controversial new online agency that has been created by five airlines -- crowed when the Consumer Reports article came out. For good reason: When you've been bashed on the head for months, it feels good to watch the club hit somebody else instead. Almost from the moment it was announced in November, Orbitz has been fighting allegations that it will lead to anti-competitiveness in the airfare marketplace. Critics suggest that a site owned by five airlines -- United, Northwest, Delta, Continental and American -- is not going to be able to resist the temptation to offer special fares that other agencies, online or offline, will not have access to; in a highly competitive environment, competitors and consumer advocates worry, Orbitz will naturally resort to behind-the-scenes, behind-the-screens deals and fares.
Not so, Orbitz says. In an interview last week, Carol Jouzaitis, the company's vice president of corporate communications, and Cornish Hitchcock, a lawyer and longtime consumer advocate whom the company has hired to build a consumer advisory panel, flatly rejected the notion that Orbitz will be anti-competitive. In addition to the five owner airlines, or "equity partners," Orbitz has signed up some 30 airlines as "charter associates" -- meaning their fares will be displayed and sold on the Orbitz site, and that they promise to give Orbitz access to their lowest public fares. In return, the company has gone out of its way to legally guarantee neutrality in its listings. "We turned all our contractual materials over to the Justice Department because we knew we had nothing to hide," Jouzaitis said. "We're the only travel Web site that has contracts with airlines that say we must be unbiased. We must display information in a neutral manner; we're contractually bound to do so."
It's the Expedias and Travelocitys of the world that need to worry about bias, the Orbitz spokespeople say, brandishing the Consumer Reports article. "There are 275 or so Web sites out there now. And Travelocity and Expedia are No. 1 and No. 2. Travelocity has six of the eight major portals. And our research shows that through those portal arrangements, Travelocity is actually reaching 85 percent of Internet households on an unduplicated basis. That's a lot of eyeballs. So what are most first-time users seeing? Travelocity! And they say we're the ones who are going to be anti-competitive and lock up market share?"
And that's why I keep seeing sumo wrestlers slogging it out in the mud. And then I wonder, do I really want to get this dirty? Because even if the allegations of bias are true, savvy Web users should be able to avoid falling for the anti-competitive ploys of any one Web site. That, ultimately, is what the Web is really good for.
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