Travel sites such as makemytrip.com and Yatra are losing sleep over Google’s plans to gear up its Flight Search service that was recently launched in India. Recently, Google launched its Flight service under Start Searching India campaign. The newly added flight feature by Google will show the exact location of any flight along with time of arrival and departure.
One can head over to www.g.co/startsearchingindia and enter the flight number in the flight section to see the exact location, departure and arrival time. So, why are travel portals such as Makemytrip, Yatra and Cleartrip worried?
As Google plans to let users compare fares and book tickets directly from airline websites, travel portals claim this may be discrimination by Google when it comes to search results relating to online travel Cleartrip founder and director Hrush Bhatt told that Google’s Flight Search could alter the way aggregators allocate their online marketing budget.
But all’s not well for Google.
The aggregators are now considering steps, including a possible complaint to the Competition Commission to protect their interests. Already, in Europe, Google’s Flight Search is under pressure from travel portals such as Expedia and TripAdvisor, which have filed antitrust complaints against Google with the European Commission for promoting rival services and disrupting fair competition in the online travel space.
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