Duff on Hospitality Law

This week’s Update features a wide variety of topics – Hopper, Capital One vacation rentals, Expedia layoffs and Hilton campgrounds.

• • AirAsia Adds Cancel for Any Reason.  AirAsia announced this past week that users of its platform (both website and application) can now cancel bookings of non-refundable fares through an integration with Hopper’s B2B Division – HTS (Hopper Technology Solutions).  HTS offers a wide variety of ancillary products and services (e.g., travel portals, fintech products) to its corporate users.  AirAsia currently offers flights from over 700 airlines.  With the addition of HTS’ ancillary cancellation product, fares that were once non-refundable (presumably a material term or condition of each airline’s offered fare) are now fully cancelable for any or no reason.  It would be interesting to know how these now “fully cancelable” fares offered through AirAsia comport with each effected airline’s own terms and conditions and those of any applicable distribution agreement.  
  • Capital One Adds Vacation Rentals.  Capital One announced last week that its Capital One Travel portal will soon feature vacation rentals from AvantStay, Boutiq and other property management companies (including eventually, Inspirato).  The rentals will be part of Capital One’s “premium” hospitality offerings. 
  • Quantas Offers Price Guarantee to Drive Platform Bookings.  A lot can be learned from the airline industry. Quantas has announced a new price guarantee that guarantees fares for up to five days when travel agents book through Quantas’ own distribution platform.  The guarantee is one of the first for the airline industry (and the only offered by an Australia or New Zealand airline).     
  • Hilton Campgrounds Coming Soon.  So why include a story about Hilton’s newly announced partnership with campground operator, Autocamp?  According to the recent announcement, Autocamp’s Airstreams, cabins and tents will soon be bookable on Hilton’s direct channels – presumably call centers, website, mobile application, etc.  It will be interesting to watch how Hilton and its channels (which until now have featured primarily traditional hotel products) will treat these very untraditional products.  It will also be interesting to see how long it takes these new products to make their way to large third-party channels (whether unintentionally through existing parity commitments or intentionally), if at all.    
  • Google’s DMA Changes Continue to Draw Criticism.  Review site Yelp is the latest to raise concerns with Google’s planned search results changes for flights, trains, hotels and restaurants in the EU.  According to Yelp, the proposed changes, which are required to help smaller companies gain more traffic from Google, are having the opposite effect (driving users to Google products).