Argophilia

Αργοφιλία: For the love of the journey.

ITA

Travelers’ Hotel Choices: No Choice At All

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When Google acquired ITA flight software a couple of years back, a group of competitors went ballistic warning of unfair practices by the Internet search and ad giant. Most people back then blew off what FairSearch was contending, this author included. As it turns out, a half dozen court cases won and a lot of water under the hotel search bridge, and potential guests really have no choice at all. Google has rigged the hotel booking game into an ad recommendation one.

Big OTAs and Big Hotels in Price Fixing Lawsuit

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A federal lawsuit naming the likes of Expedia, Orbitz, Booking.com, Travelocity, Trump International Hotels Management, Intercontinental, Kimpton, Sabre Holdings, Priceline, Marriott, Starwood, and Hilton alleges the companies conspired to fix hotel room prices. According to the news from Reuters, the suit claims the travel giants did so in an effort to fend off competition from smaller online retailers.

Google Hotel Finder Adds “Search by Travel Time”

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Google Hotel Finder has finally rolled out some of its much-anticipated ‘innovation’, in the form of a new search parameter than allows us to search for hotels by travel time from key attractions and destinations

Google Restaurant Finder? Well, Not Quite Yet

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Google’s head of Local, Maps and Location Services, Marissa Mayer, just announced the acquisition of Zagat, publisher of worldwide restaurant guides, on the Google blog. Zagat is the entity that produces some of the world’s best printable restaurant guides, and accordingly, the platform will now help refine Google tools like Maps, Places, and Hotspot too, Google’s growing recommendation engine.

Google Is NOT Taking Over Travel With Hotel Finder

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Okay, just because Google bought ITA, just because flight search stuff got put onto the search page, just because they have 50 billion reasons to take over online travel, does not mean Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, and the rest at Google will. AND, launching the unbelievably fast Google Hotel Finder aspect for online travel? Nah, Google will never take over the multi-billion dollar online travel scene. Yeah! They will.