Quote:
Originally Posted by CU Tiger
I am always interested in any business I know nothing about.
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Then you will like this.
I did some legal work once in the airline industry and learned some history.
Back in the day, airlines developed Computer Reservation Systems on these big mainframes to handle reservations.
They eventually spun those CRSs off.
So, for a while, every reservation you made that was not directly through the airline (i.e. every travel agent, every booking through expedia.com, etc.) went through the CRSs, who took their cut.
The airlines decided that they did not like these third parties taking a cut of their profits. But they were all too tied into the system to leave. You couldn't just have every travel agent in the country unable to access Delta airlines.
So certain things came into being to get around these behind-the-scenes third parties that 99% of people didn't even know existed.
Southwest Airlines started late enough that it never got into that system. That is why you go to Southwest.com to book with them. They don't turn up in any search that goes through a CRS.
Orbitz also started as an airline-owned CRS alternative. From the user perspective, it looks the same as a CRS-driven online search engine. But, behind the scenes, it is running off a different database.
I did this work back in 2001, so my information is two decades old. I am sure that the relationship between airlines and CRSs and travel agents has evolved a lot since then.
But I was fascinated at the time to learn how much was driven by market players that I didn't even know existed.
(Just like the Amazon DOT tax thing you were talking about)