The travel industry is all set to invade Chicago in mid-September for the EyeforTravel Travel Distribution Summit, which is scheduled to be held in Chicago  from Sept 16-17, 2009.

Judging from the hype and the corporate big-wigs on the speakers’ list and on the panels,  the TDS conference is going to lead to some healthy debate, at the very least.

The first panel - comprising executives from Expedia, Orbitz, Starwood and AboutAnywhere.com - will debate the shifting balance of power between suppliers and OTAs. 

In a bid to capture a bigger share of a shrinking pie, the OTAs are enagaged in a circular firing squad while suppliers are drastically cutting prices and offering freebies and specials for direct bookings through their websites.

The suppliers’ main gripe against OTAs is the commission they need to pay, and the fact that it’s hard for individual suppliers to compete with the OTAs for search traffic. This is where AboutAnywhere.com factors into the debate - with a ‘third way’ solution.

The site is free to join, the consumer is sent to the suppliers’ website for bookings and it’s entirely commission-free. If the site becomes as popular as the OTA websites, it’s a pretty good deal for suppliers. And it could force the OTAs to make changes to their own revenue models.

AboutAnywhere CEO Ashwin Kamlani says that “we have many hotels joining us that simply don’t work with the OTAs.  Then we offer the hotels in any given destination the opportunity to consolidate a part of all of their marketing budgets to be able to more effectively compete with the OTAs in the search engines and in other channels and to try to get those consumers to book directly.”

Promises to be a healthy debate. And not just healthy, but also a goldmine for picking up trends and technological knowhow from innovation leaders. The CEO’s of Tripoloy and Tripit will be talking about trip planning tools. Glenn Fogel, EVP Corporate Development, for Priceline.com will be providing expert insight on crucial distribution trends.

Sam Shank, CEO of Dealbase, will explain how to take advantage of travel comparison sites. Uptake CEO Yen Lee will shed light on site modifications required for ensuring optimized results in semantic search.

You can see the full list of speakers here and this is the full agenda for both days.

Posted on August 4th, 2009 by PLing
Filed under: Travel News