Division (12)

On the downstream side of the market, when booking through a GDS, TAs receive substantial incentive payments by the GDS providers but also possible booking commissions paid by the TSPs. This revenue will be lost if TAs book though a ‘supplier.com’. In order to compensate this loss of revenue, TAs would need to charge the end-user a service fee (which in its turn gives the end-user the incentive to book his tickets himself via ‘supplier.com’ instead of the TA, further decreasing the revenues of the TA). Therefore, the Commission concludes in the Decision that TAs have strong incentives to keep using a GDS and not to substitute bookings via GDS with bookings via ‘supplier.com’. The Commission in-depth investigation has also confirmed that TAs consider that using ‘supplier.com’ is cumbersome and lacks the versatility of inventory and price comparability offered by GDSs.