Updated Below

Online Travel Agents Makemytrip, Cleartrip, Yatra are among the over 2500 travel agencies who have decided to boycott the sale of Jet Airways‘ tickets from December 4th, reports Business Standard (via Ixigo Blog). The decision was taken a meeting of six travel agents associations - TAFI, TAAI, IAAI, IATO, ADTOI and ETAA, of which the OTAs are a part. Jet, Kingfisher and Air India stopped paying the 5% commission to travel agents from November 1st, and this is a move to make them change their stance. The travel agents have singled out Jet Airways because it is the market leader, and they’re hoping that if Jet changes its stance, the others will follow suit.

The OTAs, which are members of these organizations, are complying with the decision…at least some of them are: I just checked their sites, and Cleartrip and Yatra are not showing results from Jet, while MakeMyTrip, Expedia and Travelocity are still offering Jet and Jetlite tickets. (Screencaps: MakeMyTrip, Expedia and Travelocity)

We’d mentioned earlier about how OTAs are dealing with this situation differently - while Cleartrip had started charging a booking fee, Travelguru outsourced its search to Meta Search engine Ixigo.

One issue that may have arisen is that the fares that the OTAs would charge would be higher than the fares available on the Airline sites. The solution there lay in the Airlines also charging a booking fee. However this is sorted out, consumers are not left without an option - they can always book flights directly from Jet Airways’ website. What may just decide the outcome, is how many of them book directly.

Update: MakeMyTrip is complying with the guidelines, just hasn’t removed Jet and JetLive from their search. Here’s a screencap. (Thanks for the headsup Hrush)

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Note: we couldn’t check Via/Flightraja since their flight search wasn’t working. Update: Via was working on Saturday, when we checked it.

Internet, Travel
Tags: Cleartrip, Internet, MakeMyTrip, Online Travel Agents, Yatra