The rise of the Metasearch? - Kayak, Skyscanner, Momondo, Wego

This ain't some rocket science why Metasearch in airline ticket take off as space rockets. Some reasons:

• Online Travel Agencies (OTA) have differentiated Markup strategies. Its common OTAs have lowest markup in the most transparent and competitive traffic channel - Metasearch channel.
• Metasearch aggregates results from different Airlines and different OTAs. So most result and alternatives of the same result will be found on Metasearch.    
• Different OTAs use different versions of GDSs (POC and POS) or a combination of GDSs (Sabre, Travelport and Amadeus etc). So the the most diverse results of the same route will be found on Metasearch. This scenario has most impact on long-haul routes.

The major global Metasearch of Airline Tickets are

 

Some examples of country specif strong Metasearch of Airline Tickets are:

• Idealo.de in Germany

• Aviasales.ru in Russia

• Finn.no in Norway

• Flygresor.se in Sweden

 

 

 

Benefits/disadvantages OTAs have with Airline Tickets Metasearch

• Easy to scale and grow business
• Immediately cash flow

Greece is a good example. The Greece online market is dead, then its easy for Greece OTAs to gain customers through abroad Metasearch.

Metasearch is very positive for an OTA that hasn't bridgehead on a market and not a huge marketing budget. OTAs don't need to focus on "active marketing" (example Facebook, TV-ads or newsletter)  on a market where they want to launch a site. It takes long time to build an OTA brand on markets without Metasearch. Metasearch is a great short-cut for unknown OTA brands to take market shares on a market.

Of course Metasearch is negative for an OTA that has built a brand during several years without Metasearch sale. The tremendous work the staff has done for several years regarding linkbuilding, affiliate, landing page and social media etc can bottom-line be worthless because of all the advantages with Metasearch. 

Metasearch is hugely negative for an OTA with a huge marketing budget with the plan to grow with social media, Adwords and link building etc. Most customer will anyway find Metasearch more customer friendly because of  all mentioned advantages with Metasearch. So a huge marketing budget as OTA is likely problematic. Expedias problem to gain traffic in Scandinavia is caused by Expedias none-competitiveness on Metasearch in Scandinavia. This is very worrying for Expedia that they cant handle the Scandinavian market. Scandinavia is a Metasearch obsessed market, and Expedia cant handle it. Its very likely France, Germany and UK will be Metasearch obsessed markets. What will Expedia do then? Acquire an OTA that`s good at Metasearch and acquire Skyscanner or Momondo? Everything can be bought for money, but Expedia can solve the problem themselves if they start re-think.

As Airline Tickets Metasearch, what is the key factors for success?

 I think there are two ways to grow as Metasearch.

• The Metasearch is backed by a Media group (Broadcast radio network and television network).

This is the fast method. The Metasearch get immediately impact on a market. A great example is Momondo in Denmark that had as founder the media group TV2. Momondo did advertisement through their owner TV2. Momondo was also launched in the childhood of Metasearch, so they had a First Movers Advantages (although not the first Metasearch in Denmark). Later Momondo was sold by TV2 to Cheapflights in Britain (TV2 got a great deal). 

• The Metasearch apply traditionally Online Marketing.

This is the slow method. The Metasearch grow slowly with link-building, adwords, landing pages, adsense, social media och keywords. A great example is Flygresor.se in Sweden. Flygresor.se grew slow from a insignificant Metasearch to a significant Metasearch with a high knowledge in online marketing.

• Both strategies at the same time

Flygresor.se was recently acquired by the German Media Group -ProSiebenSat.1. Flygresor.se  will be launched in Germany under the name überflieger. The obviously plan is to apply the Momondo Denmark strategy in Germany. Its early to say if this will be a success for ProSiebenSat.1, There are differences between today Metasearch market and when Momondo was launched by TV2 in Denmark year 2006 (netflix etc). On the German marker there is already a Superstar Metasearch company, idealo.de. It will be hard for a well funded Metasearches to gain any market shares from idealo.de in Germany. Although the online market as a whole will increase in Germany it will be hard for any Metaseach to compete with the superstar idealo.de. It could be possible to compete against idealo.de if your Metasearch is much better than idealo.de and diverse as much as possible from idealo.de. 

Will Google flights be any threat to the other airline ticket Metasearch?

Google Flights future is much decided by the airlines yield management and airlines marketing regulations against Metasearch and/or OTA.

In the current situation I think its hard for Google flights in Europe to make any impact because of:

• OTAs have deficit markup in the Metachannel. The same airline ticket is mostly cheapest in the Metaseach sale channel. A) If the customer go directly to the airlines homepage its more likely more expensive compared to Metasearch. B) If the customer go directly to OTA through URL or other sale channels than Metasearch its more likely more expensive compared to Metasearch or Airlines homepage.
• Language and content. Airlines often only support the global languages. OTAs and Metasearch often support local language. It gives OTAs and Metasearch more trustworthiness than airlines homepages.
• Payment gateways and currencies. OTAs support local payment options and currencies. This point is a bit problematic because some payment options can give your company less trustworthiness. Example: Installment companies earn money on people who can`t pay their invoices. Then it could be good as airline to not provide installment payments, although you know that OTAs provide installment. 
• Inventory. Google flights has only direct connection to airlines. The strong Metasearches have connection to airlines and OTAs (GDS inventory). 
• Experience. Google flights and the different Metasearches have different features and design. Attracts different customers.

What improvements do Airlines have to do on Metasearch?

Airlines marketing department has to go back to the drawing board. In my mind it sounds very unnecessary for airlines to go through OTAs to get sale through Metasearch. Airlines could avoid costly intermediate and middle men as OTAs and GDS.

AIRLINES are wonderful generators of profit—for everyone except themselves. Even in good times their margins are as thin as a boarding pass, and in recent years they have more often lost money.

Some fact:

• OTAs have GDSs (Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport) as intermediate between themselves and airlines.
• OTAs are very dependent of Metasearch .
• The Airlines pay approximate 12 $ per round-trip booking (source the economist) to GDS.
• Important profit source for airlines are ancillary products.

The airlines could save huge amount of money if they only accepted airline direct-connection with Metaseach. Firstly airlines will save a lot of expenditures to the GDS. Secondly airlines will increase turnover and profit on ancillary products. Thirdly, airlines will decrease opportunity lost due to OTAs arbitrage robots. Fourthly, airlines will get more customer data that can be used for different profit purposes.

Lufthansa has applied above written, but most airlines haven't applied any certain change. On the German Metasearch market only direct-connection to Lufthansa is accepted. 

Airlines marketing departments and Travel technology companies have to improve/increase their relationship. The large airlines should maybe have more in-house technology because technology is a core competitive factor. As airline you maybe don`t want to see the same marketing feature you have applied 3 weeks later applied at your competitive airline, because you have the same travel technology provider as your competitors. Airlines have also to improve their local presence with different technology solutions. Even if the airline have few flights to a country the airline should support local payments. That is a real important task for travel technology companies to solve. It might be costly for airlines, but they will long-term save a lot of money.

My suggestions to airlines

• Only accept airline direct connection to Metasearch.
• Improve relationship with travel technology companies.
• Airlines should use more advantages of the online channel. Try to leave the Over the counter sale thinking. Over the counter sale will be important in the future, but less of importance.
• Airlines local representatives should work less with visiting offline agencies (over the counter thinking). Local representatives should more visiting local Metasearch companies and do more local online marketing (could be local SEO companies etc). Example translation of texts, adwords and email marketing etc. Importance of email marketing for airlines will increase due to more "direct" sale through the Metasearch channel.

Metasearch isnt a pure organic sale channel for airlines. The Metasearch channel "airline direct connection" is the least worst sale channel for airlines. The alternative for airlines are the hugely expensive GDS traffic.

On the other hand the Airlines will with "airline direct connection" to Metasearch make a commoditization of themselves. An Airline ticket will not be more different than the milk bottle on milk shelf in the grocery store. If the world looks like this or go towards this development of course the airlines have to adjust their business plan. There are some reason why Ryanair, Norwegian and EasyJet are successful.

What future do Metasearch have?

The future of Metasearch is set by the airlines yield management strategy. This is no exactly science how airlines yield strategy looks like, it differs from country to country, time and airline etc. The customers have different price sensibility and different knowledge because of information asymmetry. Some airlines have highest fares in their own channel because customer which not compare prices are likely to be least price sensitive. 

In the future there is a possibility that lowest fares will not occur in the Metasearch channel. Airlines might want to spread lowest fares on several channels to keep up the over all profit.  But this point of view is unlikely because of Metasearch is the most transparent and competitive channel.  

Its hard to make a Metasearch profitable from day 1 on a market. Some important notes regarding Metasearch.

• A new Metasearch on a market will have cash-flow problems in the beginning, its more a necessity as Metaseach to have cash-flow problems.
• To solve cash-flow problem the Metasearch needs much money on the bank.
• The Metasearch is likely necessary in the beginning to provide the product to the OTAs for free.
• During the build up period the Metasearch will not have access to all OTA supplier (and some OTAs wont either), therefor the Metasearch will suffer low conversion rate. This is especially problematic for a newly launched Metasearch brand on already mature Metasearch market. Momondo is superstar in Denmark, Finn.no is Superstar in Norway. Idealo.de superstar in Germany. This undoubtedly problematic for Kayak and Skyscanner that have a goal to create new Metasearch empires where the sun never sleeps. 
• When Metasearch engines as Skyscanner or Kayak tries to gain market shares in Scandinavia they don't seem to be aware of the enormous Metasearch forces that are at large in Scandinavia. 
• When a Metasearch brand reach the "Superstar"position they can almost decide what ever they want regarding CPA or CPC. The Metasearch brand Flygresor.se was bought by Etraveli in Sweden. It didn't take many month until Etraveli increased the CPC fee 100%. Why did Etraveli do that? 1. Because they can 2. Its a commercial company, not charity company.
• When a Metasearch gained bridgehead on the market its wise to make some sort of CPC or/and CPA deal with the OTAs and/or airlines.
• It is important as Metasearch to drive quality traffic for the OTAs otherwise the OTAs will get low conversion rate against the GDS (many searches against the GDS but not many booking).
• As Metasearch it is important to have much money in the bank. When your product is working the conversion rate on most marketing activities will be better than for the same marketing activities for the OTAs or airlines. Why? Its lowest prices in the Metasearch channel. 

The awkward situation has now occurred in Europe that the OTA sale channel is the most expensive per booking for airlines. Why is it like this? The OTAs in Europe are highly dependent of Metasearch. Metasearch generates a lot of searches on the OTAs, in the end the OTA send a lot of requests to GDSs which cost airlines. The Metasearch channel has terrible "look to book ratio" for airlines and OTAs. Over the counter customers have much better "look to book ration" than Metasearch OTA customers. The problem for airlines with over the counter bookings are that they have to "bribe" (example a give away tickets to Mauritius etc.) the travel consultant/agency to sell their tickets. Then the airlines start to compete against each other in "bribery", which is far worse than worsen "look to book ratio" at OTAs due to higher dependency of Metasearch. 

The OTA ranking on Metasearch

The "look to book" paradox is very interesting. How the OTA is ranked/positioned on Metasearch is no different than how the OTA is ranked/positioned on Google SERP (Search engine results page). 

What is "look to book"? Amount bookings/amount searches GDS

What do we know about ranking?

• Metaseach/Aggregators have a tendency to be top ranked on Google (not only regarding travel). Tripadvisor, Skyscanner and Kayak are commonly top ranked on commonly search word/phrases. And its a huge difference between ranked 1-3 compared to the other ranking positions (see SERP). 
• As OTA it is very important to be good ranked/positioned on Metasearch, otherwise it might be a well thought to leave Metasearch entirely. Otherwise, you as none-competitive OTA will become some sort of supporting actor (no booking) who only feeds trustworthiness and good reputation to the superstar OTAs (high ranked and lot of bookings) and the Metasearch itself. As none-competitive OTA (supporting actor) its maybe anyway the least worst decision to participate in Metasearch. A important reminder is that Metasearches gain traffic thanks to all participating OTAs, but its only a few OTAs that gain a lot of bookings through Metasearch. Each individually OTA makes no difference on Metasearch, it all OTAs together that brings Metasearch trustworthiness and good reputation. So as Metasearch its important to let in almost all OTAs on Metasearch (as Metasearch its important to hunt all the OTAs), it gives power to the whole business concept. When your Metasearch business is settle and got bridgehead on the market you as Metasearch increase the revenues from the OTAs. Of course some OTAs cant pay the higher CPC/CPA fees, and they leave the Metasearch. On the other hand the OTAs will be so dependent of your Metasearch so they will have no option than to stay on your Metasearch and pay the higher fees. A small OTA on Metasearch will likely get a significant nominal amount of bookings through Metasearch, and the heaviest increase of sale is likely to occur in the Metasearch channel. Metasearch put OTAs in a lock-in situation, that is more or less impossible as OTA to leave.
  

How the OTA is ranked on the Metasearch result page affects the OTAs "Look to book ratio". A high ranking likely improve the "look to book" ratio. If an OTA have to bad "look to book ratio" its possible that the airline downgrade the OTA inventory access to carrier content. In worse case scenario the OTA can be blocked by the airline/airlines.

Why do the ranking differs between OTAs on Metasearch?

• OTAs have "generally" different markup on airline tickets (deficit markup is mandatory on the best ranked OTAs). Example: OTAs can have different markup on cluster one and cluster two etc. OTA can have different markup on result one and two etc. The OTA does it to catch the customer, the other result might have higher markup.
• OTAs have "specific" different markup on airline tickets due to incentive agreements with specific airlines. Example: An airline gives the OTA a certain amount of money if they reach a certain sale goal. To reach the goal the OTA lowers the markup so they are 1 cent below the competitors on Metasearch. The OTA says to the airline that the sale increase is due to some sort of Newsletter campaign with the airline. Actually newsletter conversion rate for OTA airline tickets are very low in Europe (embarrassing low). So bottom line, the increase of sale with a certain airline is not due to some marketing activities. The actually reason is the lower markup the OTA put on Metasearch so the OTA can reach the sale goal and therefore get the bonus from the airline. As OTA it sounds better to say to the airline that the sale increase is due to Newsletter, than some sort of Metasearch strategy. Actually, the airline has not increased the sale, the sale has only moved from travel agency A to travel agency B on Metasearch.
• OTAs have "specific" different markup on airline tickets due to agreements with specific GDS (as OTA you want to reach so targets).
• OTAs have "specific" different markup on airline tickets due to likelihood customer buys ancillary services. Example A: If a kid is included in the search its more likely the customer will purchase cancellation policy. OTAs use the cancellation policy to steer their markup on Metasearch. Example: If search includes more than 1 pax its more likely the customer will purchase cancellation policy. OTAs use the cancellation policy to steer their markup on Metasearch (cancellation insurance and cancellation policy are two completely different things). Therefore the OTA has lower markup on booking with more than 1 pax, "what you lose on the swings, you make up on the roundabouts". Note: Its very important with the difference between cancellation policy and cancellation insurance, when studying a Metasearch result page. And has commercial law implications between countries). 
• OTAs have "specific" different markup on airline tickets due to arbitrage robots. Example: A) Exact same airline ticket have different fares in Amadeus Selling Platform and Amadeus Masterpricer (OTA can keep the difference) B) Re-book. Exact same airline ticket could have different fares depending on time of booking. Bookings have to be ticketing before midnight, During the time frame between booking and ticketing the fare can change. C) Exact same airline ticket can have different fares/taxes in different GDSs. D) Exact same ticket can have different fares/taxes on different Office IDs (Point of sale/Point of commencement). Then the OTA keeps the difference. E) Pax optimization. Customer books 5 pax LHR-NYC. 1000 $ per pax booking class A in Amadeus Masterpricer. So customer pays 5000 $. But the Travel agency can have robot that feels that there are 4 pax left in Booking class B. 800 $ per pax. So the OTA makes following re-ticketing (Booking class A 5*1000) to (Booking class A B 4*800+ Booking class A 1*1000) . Customer still pays 5000 $ to Travel Agency, but Travel Agency only pays 4600 $ to BSP/FOP. This one strong reason why OTAs love volumes. Lets say you as OTA 10.000 bookings per day and in 1% of all cases this robot is applied. Its a lot of money to earn on year basis. F) Ticketing on another airline. Example exact same ticket could have different fares in LH and AC (Operating carrier/Marketing carrier/Ticketing carrier).
• Different fares and routes are applied on different Country Office ID and Ticketing Office IDs. As Metasearch you want to have lowest markup and highest variety of search results. It could be a good to mixture completely different OTAs in the same basket (search result page). Ctrip (Ctrip has no German site) in China is displayed on Skyscanner Germany for flight outbound Germany to China.
  

Above written is really of importance if you as OTA want to gain sale. In today's online travel market the Metasaerch channel is huge, and gaining market shares. 

"Metasearch crowd out all other OTA sales channels" 

As OTA its one thing is to understand that Metasearch works, another story is to earn profit on Metaseach as OTA. Its of importance to have knowledge of the entire sale process. As OTA you need to have high knowledge about arbitrage ticketing robots, check-out button, different commercial laws in different countries and payment gateways etc.  As OTA you have a lot of buzz around you that social media etc is of importance. In my opinion that could be true on some markets, where Metasearch has not yet used their landing vessels to reach bridgehead.

A OTA that has spend a lot of money and time to build reputation and trustworthiness aren't interested in helping Metasearch to reach bridgehead on a none-Metasearch market. Good examples could be Decolar in Brazil or/and Travelstart in Africa. But on the other hand this aversion towards Metasearch is as Titanic water pumps and water tight doors. It will help the OTAs for a while, but in the end they have to capitulate to their "enemy" and destiny Metasearch. If a Metasearch gain bridgehead on a none-Meatasearch market it is almost impossible for the OTA with high reputation and trustworthiness to fight back. The reason is that the old OTA will keep the old business plan that had worked until now. The OTA could fight back with launching OTAs in other countries where Metaseach is a big deal. On the other hand this sounds a bit far fetched because the OTA have to change business plan from Marketing driven to Computer engineer driven business. Its not so likely to happen because the Marketers and Customer service will lose influence to Computer engineer. To build all arbitrage robots to be competitive on Metasearch the OTA needs Computer engineer.

The lesson from the Scandinavian Online Travel Market

I think the evolve of Scandinavian Online Travel market is very interesting if you want to get knowledge of what will happen on other markets regarding Metasearch. Below I have some important points regarding Scandinavia: 

• Early adapters of new eCommerce products/services 
• The middle class is large compared to other classes. 
• The middle class is rich compared to other countries

I started year 2006 working with Metasearch at the OTA Travelstart Nordic, I thought it was carte blanche and we gained a lot of bookings. In the beginning Metasearch was a small subject. Our competitors was occupied with other stuff as social blogging, advertisement in TV, affiliate marketing, newsletter and Adowords etc. The first two years it was as a free ride. Only the sky was the limit how much bookings Travelstart Nordic could gain through Metasearch.

Travelstart Nordic was a success much thanks to Metasearch engines as Momondo in Denmark, Reseguiden in Sweden and Finn.no in Norway. Of course we our-self did a good work.  We at Travelstart Nordic did a lot of butterfly things. The butterfly effect of all small things together makes a huge difference on the bottom line of the balance sheet.  Travelstart Nordic was in the beginning not at all a famous OTA brand in Scandinavia. The American trustworthy owned OTAs in Scandinavia together with the old school travel agencies in Scandinavia gave all the Metasearch engines good reputation and trustworthiness. But Travelstart as an anonymous OTA player took a Lion's share of the bookings because we where cheapest on Metasearch. Travelstart Nordic was the outsiders who won over the famous (David vs Goliath). Travelstart Nordic was as well pretty good at converting ancillary services, automize customer service tasks and different types of arbitrage robots. In the beginning it looked like Travelstart Nordic and the competitors lived in parallel universes. We at Travelstart Nordic could do whatever we wanted on Metasearch, because the competitors was occupied with their daily life. Adwords, rigid corporate culture, TV-advertisement, blogging etc.

But "he who laughs last, laughs best". Travelstart Nordic success didn't last forever. Travelstart Nordic had two major competitor in Scandinavia, Tavelpartner and Etraveli. Travelpartner did a lot of advertisement in the subway and TV. Travelpartner went horrible bad. Travelpartner was on the brink of bankruptcy.  Etraveli was real good at affiliate, SEO and Newsletter etc, but Etraveli was not really good at Metasearch. Etraveli was as well acquiring other Scandinavian OTAs to consolidating the Scandinavian market.

What happened in the end? The OTA Travelpartner copycated entire Travelstart Nordic, and did it better.

So what did Travelpartner do to gain profit and market share on the Scandinavian market?

• Its hard and time consuming for Travelpartner to try to gain market shares from Etraveli`s affiliate, SEO and Newsletter etc. And at the same time the relevance of these traffic channels diminish because its always lowest fares in the Metasearch channel.
• Travelpartner realized correctly that the weak point on the Scandinavian market was OTA sale through Metasearch. So Travelpartner decided to attack Travelstart Nordic main market channel, Metasearch. I got one hell of a ride at Travelstart Nordic by Travelpartner . I sat in the middle of the nights on weekends and changed markup on Metasearch. Luckily the CEO at Travelstart Nordic cared about the Metasearch question, so I could call her whenever I wanted. I had guidelines from her so I often didn't have to call her. At Travelstart Nordic we didn't have any Computer Engineers working full time with arbitrage robots and spam Metasearch engines. Travelpartner completely spammed the Metasearch engines with their content. I thought it was pretty smart done by Travelpartner. Unfortunately I didn't have any direct access to computer engineers. Its always a struggle at an office about the limited computer engineers resources. I knew what Travelpartner was doing, but I couldn't fight back. That`s real sad.

In the end Travelstart Nordic couldn't keep up with the heavy bombardment by Travelpartner on Metasearch. So Travelstart Nordic was sold to Etraveli in the beginning of year 2010 (important note: Travelstart Nordic and Travelstart world wide has completely different owners).

What Did Travelpartner do more?

When Travelstart Nordic was out of the game, it went even easier for Travelpartner. All the sale that before went to Travelstart Nordic was transferred to Travelpartner, although it was Etraveli that bought Travelstart Nordic.

Etraveli said to their owners that the sale drop was due to their Computer Engineers had made a lot of mistakes in the merge between Travelstart and Etraveli engines. In my mind this could be true, but Etraveli`s sale drop with Travelstart Nordic would have happened anyway because Etraveli hadn't caught Travelstart Nordic and Travelpartners heavy obsession for Metasearch.

 

 

Etraveli must have been a bit annoyed that the acquisition of Travelstart didn't went so well. As a consequence Etraveli bought Travelpartner for 25 million € in the late summer of 2010.

What is the back-side to acquire Travelpartner?

The interesting with successful OTAs on Metasearches are that the brand is worthless. Its the technology and process that is of interest. Travelpartner`s technology was on another company, Mrorange.

 

 

 

So what happened? This time Etraveli was sure not to do the same mistake as they did when they acquired Travelstart Nordic. All the staff and most of the management at Travelpartner was as well transferred to Etraveli. The problem was that Travelpartner`s travel technology company Mrorange had a will to leave Etraveli (and they left). After a year or so at Etraveli, the former Travelpartner management leaves Etraveli. Then the spectacular occurs, Travelpartners previous owners/management buy shares (at least 40%) in Flygstolen/Tripmonster. Travelpartner`s previous management takes Travelpartner`s former source code through MrOrange and put it in Flygstolen/Tripmonster. Flygstolen (owned by Travelparner`s former management) now compete against Travelpartner (now owned by Etraveli). So the 25 million € Etraveli spent on acquiring Travelpartner was more or less like throwing 25 million € in the trash bin. Of course Travelpartner former management and MrOrange had planed this master plan against Etraveli since the beginning. I think the master plan was very immoral, but from a business perspective brilliant. Commercial laws is weaker in Sweden than USA, so Etraveli cant sue Travelpartners former management and MrOrange for being business smart. This case is a great example why OTA brands are worthless to acquire unless you buy/keep the technology. Anyway it might be doubtful to acquire OTAs because of the Metasearch dependency OTAs have. Its very simple to make OTA copies of brands on Metasearch. The hard skill is to master travel technology skills. I think skilled travel technology companies are in a good situation because they are the actually the brain of the OTAs. Travel technology companies can as well do other tasks than travel technology.   

As you can read above, the OTA Etraveli learnt Metasearch at a very high expense. Etraveli has to pay interest rate on the OTAs they bought. They could have learnt how their competitors in Scandinavia gained a lot of bookings through Metasearch without acquiring them, especially when OTA brands on Metasearch is worthless. Its the travel technology that is of importance and is worth something. 

Conclusion

Customers love Metaserch. The main differentiators on Metaseach is price. So its not so surprising that OTAs and Airlines commonly dislike Metasearch. 

We now see a lot of Metasearch engines launching on different markets. In some way or another Metasearch compete against the big 3 GDS - Amadeus, Travelport and Sabre. These GDSs are built on very old technology which is out-dated since the Battle of Hastings 1066.  The GDSs are like fat-cats (there have not happened so much since the Battle of Hastings 1066), so I am not so worried if new thinkers at different Metasearches could win over GDSs. The GDS system costs the airlines to much, there are cheaper and better alternatives to GDSs.

The amount of Metasearches are a bit worrying together with the problematic cash-flow question. As Metasearch you need to do a lot of marketing, and short/medium term have no revenues.

Metasearch will not completely re-place GDSs, but many of the bookings can be proceeded through cheap and high-tech Metasearch.

OTAs will in the near future gain a heavy growth through Metasearch on the expense of the "Over the counter travel agencies" sale. OTAs will be more dependent of 1 single sale channel, Metasearch, Other OTA sale channels will slowly decrease in importance (Social Media, Affiliate, SERP and Adwords etc). This happens due to the advantages with Metasearch for the customers. Metasearch has lowest prices compared to other sale channels, most inventory and highest transparency.

The unemployment rate for Travel agent will increase if you not working at an OTA (OTAs will have to employ travel agents). But on the other hand "what comes up must come down". Airlines will eventually only allow airline direct connection on Metasearch, so in the long run the OTA booking amount will significant be weakening. And as consequence the GDSs will lose importance. 

In the near future I suppose Odigeo group will spend more time with their Metasearch liligo and Bravofly will try to improve their Metaseach Jetcost. They need to take counter measures against Skyscanner, Momondo, Kayak and Wego etc.

 

 

 

I think it will be very interesting and see how the raise of Metasearch will affects the Airline industry.