[smueller1234]

I think you're pushing your agenda pretty hard here. Not that everything you say is entirely wrong either, but I think you're overstating benefits of one side and ignoring the others'.

You mention that the big OTAs seek (online only btw!) price parity. But you don't mention that the largest of the OTAs hasn't enforced it much for many years if ever (source: I wrote code for price parity analysis for them back in 2011). You also conveniently omit that MFNs have been tremendously weakened or outlawed in much of the EU.

I'd also like to challenge the notion that direct bookings are always better for you as a traveler. Hotels do play funny games with customers (eg overbookings) all the time (source: family from the hotel industry and I worked for an OTA where you could experience a day in the shoes of a customer service agent). Booking through large OTAs had two possible (albeit not guaranteed) advantages. The OTAs generally consider the traveler their customer. Not the hotel. So if there is a conflict ("I'm sorry - it looks like I dont have your reservation on file..."), they will put their considerable influence behind the shunned traveler. The fact that online ratings have significant impact on the rate of bookings that hotels get also means that they have an additional incentive to not mistreat the customers that can submit these ratings on the large OTAs.

Finally, let me make one more argument in favor of OTAs. I'll claim that consumers WANT to be able to efficiently search for accommodation that matches their criteria incl budget. I sure do! And it just makes sense: do you all remember the times when you had to call lots of hotels before you finally found that one that had a free room? Travel sucked a great deal more. And it was a lot more a matter of luck whether you'd hit a good one. So people WILL use modern technology to search places to stay. Without the OTAs, the search engines will fill that gap. And lo and behold: a very, very large percentage of the commission that OTAs charge goes to online performance marketing. (Some of those numbers are public so I could likely quote, but I don't want to accidentally disclose anything I contractually mustn't, so please look them up in the filings.)

Disclosure: used to work for an OTA, now for Google (but not anywhere near the travel or ads products).