[junto]

I'm thinking the same.

My brother works in the travel software industry (for a big player) and that market is an extremely hard nut to crack, unless you are coming at it with a boat load of contacts and money.

The big tour operators (I know this from the European side) are quite well tied into the bug boys contractually. They often will enforce sole-usage on hotels to prevent this kind of side market entry your parents have attempted. the hotels can be penalized or dropped from the operator's books, for simply offering rooms outside the tour operator.

[rwhitman]

Interesting. I have a client who has a booking engine for their very specific education tour company and have been wondering if I could port the software for resale. They sell direct to the traveler no agents or 3rd parties so it works well for them but I've been curious if this model is adopted widely..

I don't know enough about the larger industry and what barriers there are to entry however. What kinds of tour operators in Europe are blocking entry to the market? Is this just tour groups making certain hotels exclusive, or the booking sites?