Paid Placements Hit Travel Booking Sites
from the and-so-it-goes... dept
theodp writes "The WSJ reports that bias is increasingly creeping into reservations systems like Sabre and travel sites like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz. Federal regulations prohibiting bias in central travel computer systems expired in August. Airlines are now free to pay to have more expensive flights with inconvenient connections listed ahead of their competitors, and the practice has spread to hotel room listings. In response to the new tactics, which also include listing hotels as sold out or unavailable when they aren't, some are crying foul - InterContinental plans to yank its inventory from Expedia and Hotels.com and Northwest Airlines refuses to let CheapTickets.com sell its flights." All this means it's only going to get more difficult for the average person to book their own vacation at the best rate.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
