JetBlue has led off a new skirmish in the long competition over bookings between the airlines and online travel agents by pulling its ticket services from a dozen smaller OTAs.
The carrier says cutting those ties was in the works for several months, and that only a small percentage of its customers used those smaller agencies.
The real battle is, of course, over money. The airlines want to sell tickets directly because that gives them the opportunity to upsell: luggage fees, flight insurance, seat preferences and more, which can’t be bought directly through the OTAs. On the other hand, none of the airlines is prepared to completely cut ties with the larger vendors and aggregators, because they would miss many passengers. Thus, the cutting of ties with smaller sites may serve as a prod to the larger ones.
Other airlines have taken steps, sometimes temporary, along the same path. American pulled its tickets from Orbitz in 2013; Delta cut off some larger sites such as TripAdvisor two years ago. And Southwest, the #4 domestic carrier, pretty much shares its sales and tickets with no one.
