Sunday, September 21, 2008

OTA (Orbitz, MakeMyTrip, etc) versus Meta Search (Kayak, DoHop, etc)

Pure play Airline OTA's (MakeMyTrip, ClearTrip, etc) are challenged with Airlines cutting travel agent ticket commissions to almost zero! Meta search engine's such as DoHop, etc compare fares across airlines and redirect transactions to the respective airline sites. Meta search engine's business model is ad & referral based and also do not incur credit card/transaction processing fees unlike airline OTA's! Hence meta airline search engine business model is little saner than airline OTA's business model. Probably we will see a shift of airline OTA's to package/hotel OTA's.