Edward West edward.west@inl.co.za THE BIG INTERNATIONAL online tourism booking and event platforms impose pricing parity policies on the venues listed on their sites, not good news for consumers looking for cheaper prices and it stifles marketing innovation among tourist venues and resorts.
This emerged on Friday at the third day of the Competition Commission’s Online Intermediation Platform Market Inquiry.
Reinard du Plessis, general manager of marketing at ATKV, a local camping and resorts company, told the inquiry that the conditions of being listed with the large international travel booking platforms included that the venue needed to ensure its prices and rates were the same across all the online booking agencies that the venue had contracted to list with, although the venue was free to post promotional prices on its own…