602 COMPETITION LAW IN TOURISM that airline pricing is a branch of witchcraft, but steeling the resolve of many to take control of the entire process. Google then started to predict your next holiday destination. That saw the rise of the ETTSA’s members, as they used new technologies to sit on top of the legacy information flows and passenger preferences. At the same time, the airlines severed their traditional principal- -agent relationship with travel agents by refusing to pay agents a commission on ticket sales. The airlines’ argument is: why pay an agent for a sale you can make yourself, as they increased spending on their in-house websites. More importantly, why pay a reservation system to manage a booking that eventually will need to be in your system anyway? But the identity of the passenger is a fundamental piece of information. An analysis of the competition issues surfacing in this sphere will show that they are both dynamic and complex. On one side, there is a relationship between the airlines and the GDS. Airlines introduced fees for booking through GDSs in response to the ever growing charges GDSs imposed, regardless of the price paid for the tickets. That is a two-way fight. Then, on the other side, there is a relationship between the airlines and the new technology providers that do not charge the airlines a fee. That is a fight about data and access to it, which includes data about the passengers and their preferences – perhaps how much they are prepared to pay. There is little love lost between the legacy GDSs and their new online cousins either. Each sees the other as their main competitor. Their interdependency is obvious – GDSs need the new players’ data and searching skills, the new players need to actually make reservations – but that does not stop the relationship from being rather complex. Indeed, it probably intensifies the rivalry. However, both the GDS and the ETTSA have a common cause against the airline fees, and the NDC more generally, to the extent it represents a stab at vertical integration by the airlines. Where, after all, you may ask, is the consumer’s place? The current regulation, the topic of the consultation, is aimed squarely at the consumer interest. It is aimed at resolving issues such as screen bias and the ranking of flights to prevent any airline with an ownership interest in a GDS using that interest to present flight options that favour themselves. So far, the technology has advanced beyond those concerns, in a way that makes us look back at those halcyon days of yore and pine for them. Assuming, for a moment, that the Commission continues to take as its lodestone the passengers’ best interest, one may look at any review of the current regulation and focus entirely on ensuring that the information being presented
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