Hotel chains are mad as you-know-what at travel websites and they are not going to take it anymore.
Over the years, hotels have grudgingly cooperated with sites like Expedia and Travelocity, even though working with them has come at the cost of commissions and the basic business notion that you don’t want to let someone get between you and your customers. Now major hotel chains are offering perks like free Wi-Fi and better room selections if travelers book directly with them rather than through one of the travel sites. And some are even pushing regulators to block a planned merger between the heavyweight sites Expedia and Orbitz.
Expedia may be getting too big for comfort. In January, it acquired Travelocity, and if it takes over Orbitz it will control about 75 percent of the domestic market for third-party online booking, according to the research firm Phocuswright.
Lest tech industry types judge the hoteliers too harshly, they should remember that complaining to regulators about overly powerful competitors is a long tradition in tech — Microsoft in the dot-com boom; Google in today’s tech industry boom.
Here’s a thought: Maybe they all could get together, make some fun costumes, create an interesting art installation or two, and talk out their differences while attending this week’s Burning Man event in Nevada, a free-thinking art festival and weeklong dance party that over the last few years has turned into the tech industry’s great kumbaya in the desert.
But, please, no sequins. They leave a mess.