34 COMPETITION LAW IN TOURISM other hand, marketing services and booking functionality to travel service providers. As with physical travel agents, OTAs collect their revenues through commissions paid by travel service providers for their sold products. For the time being, the EU OTA market is dominated by two influential players: Booking.com and Expedia. According to the large-scale survey, coordinated within the European Competition Network (ECN) in 2016, the hotels across the EU expected the two platforms to grow further and new entrants to face serious difficulties54. However, an alternative view suggests that digital giants, such as Amazon and Google, will likely challenge their standing through their travel platforms55. Metasearch Services (MSSs) comprise websites or apps which aggregate information relating to one or more types of travel service. MSSs provide search and comparison services to consumers, allowing them to compare offers for the same travel product made by various travel service providers and/or by one or more OTAs56. In addition, the MSSs ensure lead generation services for travel service providers and OTAs, for instance, Skyscanner.com, a website that compares prices charged by different enterprises for the same flight. Across the EU, the most popular MSSs among hotels are TripAdvisor, Trivago, Kayak and Google57. Usually, the MSS’ revenues consist of fees either charged on a commission per acquisition basis or a pay-per-click basis58. The MSSs may also generate profits by entering into commercial affiliate agreements with customers (typically, other MSS providers, OTAs or travel blogs), letting them include MSS services in their offers to their website visitors. Travel service providers and OTAs remain responsible for the after-sales services. The relationship between MSSs and OTAs and hotels is essentially a revenue-sharing partnership. As remuneration, the affiliate is paid a share of the revenue earned by MSS from OTAs and hotels for bookings generated via the affiliate’s site. The affiliate has the benefit of monetising its website, relying on the MSS’s offering, while the MSS benefits from broader exposure59. Besides active competition enforcement (discussed below) and vivid academic debate surrounding online travel intermediaries, the latter have recently been 54 EC Online Hotel Booking Monitoring Report, supra note 40, p. 22. 55 Suzanne Rowan Kelleher, Google And Amazon’s Disruption Of The Online Travel Industry Is Looking Inevitable, Forbes, 30.06.2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2019/06/30/google-and-amazons-disruption -of-the-online-travel-industry-is-looking-inevitable/#e9cc8b98e0fc. 56 See, e.g., Case M.9005 – Booking Holdings/Hotelscombined (23.10.2018), para. 13. 57 EC Online Hotel Booking Monitoring Report, supra note 40, p. 22. 58 Case M.9005, supra note 56, para. 15. 59 Ibid, para. 16-17.
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