Duff on Hospitality Law

This week’s Update again features a wide variety of stories, including an important update on the much beleaguered spokesman for metasearch site, Trivago.  Enjoy.

• • Google Again Delays Demise of Third-Party Cookies.  Good news for online marketers using third party cookies via Google Chrome.  Google has again delayed its planned elimination of third-party cookies – this time until early 2025.  Google’s recent announcement is the third such delay since announcing in 2020 that it would be eliminating third party cookies within two years.  Google attributes its latest delay to two primary factors – (1) advertisers, which have been up in arms over the planned elimination and its likely effects and (2) regulators, primarily the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which has expressed concern over the elimination and its potentially anti-competitive effects. 
  • Sustainable Travel Options Not As Important As Originally Thought?  For several weeks now, we’ve featured stories detailing online travel platforms’ sustainability efforts.  Now comes a report from Booking.com suggesting that sustainable travel options may not be that important to travelers.  In short, while the majority of travelers (84%) may say that having and making sustainable travel choices may be important to them, it isn’t a priority.  In fact, many of the survey’s respondents (28%) reported that they are weary of even hearing about climate change.  Approximately a third of the respondents reported that they thought that climate change damage had already occurred.  As for who should bear responsibility for doing something about climate change, almost half responded that governments (44%) or travel companies (43%) should be responsible (and not individual travelers).  The Booking.com survey results mirror many of the findings of other research in the area, including a survey conducted earlier this year by Phocuswire. 
  • Instant Online Group Bookings – Fact or Fiction?  For those of you who have been to one of my presentations on online distribution, you know that I typically end my presentation with a brief overview of what we see in the distribution world in the months or years ahead.  For several years now, online group bookings (and online group booking tools) have made our list.  But now, years after the somewhat anticlimactic introduction of many of these online tools and platforms – think Bizly, Groupize, CVENT’s Instant Book and lodging industry backed Groups360 (as well as the many direct booking tools introduced by many of the large lodging operators) - the future of online group bookings may be farther away than we first expected.  According to a recent survey by Business Travel News (BTN), there are several factors hindering the option of these online platforms – among them (1) the inherent power and benefits of legacy RFPs, (2) lack of appropriate inventory and (3) company procurement guidelines requiring competitive bids.