In March and April of this year, some of the biggest online travel agencies (OTAs) cut their flight booking fees. The booking fee changes were largely a response to competitive pressures: why would a consumer pay a fee on an OTA site when the same flight is available at the same price on the airline site without a fee? Moreover, Priceline has been operating without flight booking fees since the summer of 2007. Compete leveraged behavioral data from its panel of millions of US consumers to examine who wins and who loses in a world without flight bookings fees.
