A recent skirmish over a U.S. Senate appropriations bill highlighted an ongoing battle between airlines on one side and OTAs and travel search sites on the other.
The bill, which has since been blocked, would have funded the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for 2016.
But as submitted by the Appropriations Committee to the full Senate, it included a provision that would have disallowed any spending on proposed consumer-protection regulations related to the purchase of and shopping for plane tickets through OTAs such as Expedia and Priceline and metasearch sites such as Google Flights, Trip Advisor and Kayak.
Four senators, including Senate Transportation Committee Chairman John Thune and the committee's ranking Democrat, Bill Nelson, had filed an amendment on Nov. 19 to strip that provision from the bill. However, the legislation was effectively killed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) over a separate dispute about providing housing subsidies to refugees.
Still, before the fight over the consumer protection funding quieted, it had already raised the hackles of the trade organization Airlines for America (A4A), which issued a statement applauding Thune, Nelson and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who sponsored the amendment.
At issue in the debate are proposed DOT rules first made public in May 2014. In general, they would hold OTAs and travel search sites to the same standards as airline carriers that sell tickets through their own websites.
Among other items, the rules would require that ticket sellers with revenue of more than $100 million a year offer 24-hour reservation holds, provide prompt refunds and notify passengers of ticket changes in a timely manner.
The rules would also clarify the definition of a ticket agent to include GDSs and metasearch sites; require disclosures for basic ancillary fee information, such as checked bags and advance seat assignments; and require an OTA or search site to disclose when it is biasing results to show flights offered by specific carriers ahead of others.
In a late November interview, A4A Senior Vice President of Global Government Affairs Sean Kennedy called the proposed regulations a no-brainer.
"At the end of the day, this is really the easiest issue to educate lawmakers on," he said. "If you have two groups of customers who buy airline tickets, should they get the same consumer protections or different ones?"
But in public comments to the DOT and in other public statements, travel technology companies and even ASTA have said regulators should also place new requirements on airlines in relation to the third-party sale of basic ancillary options.
"Not only do we want consumers to be able to see these basic ancillary options but also, in the final analysis, to be able to transact upon the services, wherever they shop and purchase," Philip Monardi, spokesman for the OTA trade organization Travel Tech, said in an interview last week.
He noted that at present airlines can pick and choose the services they offer to specific sales channels and can leave out the very ancillary services that the DOT has proposed requiring OTAs to inform consumers about.
Transportation funding for 2016 is now likely to be dealt with in a broader omnibus appropriations bill, according to Politico.