“Accommodation, transport and or other tourist services purchased on the internet from different sites which are clearly linked on their web pages” – this is very ambigous.

The respondents might have justifiably thought that this would mean where those advertisers are owned by the same company and not targeted the media owner (Google).

Penalising the media owner will almost certainly lead to increased ad distribution costs.

I do however, think travel sites/third party sites that carry rich data need to be diligent in ensuring the data, pricing, seasonality is accurate (and incl all required taxes etc) to prevent disconnects (or the instance/impression of bait and switch) that might adversly affect consumers.

Off to the submission site.

What I’d really like to hear now is what Google would say to such an initiative.

Typically they do not comment on anything that involves policy within another organisation or sector (unless it’s China, of course ), but this has potential to run and run.

Nevertheless, one wonders if ABTA will now be forced to rethink their strategy given what they are implying…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by kevinlukemay: Dig deeper and it’s amazing what emerges!! ABTA may propose even Google be made responsible for protecting travellers http://is.gd/6NFIs...

How do you stop local tour operators outside the EU selling direct to EU customers through there website? In many countries few are bonded and our laws have no teeth to deal with it.

But then it gets tricky – as if you are a travel website and you have advertising on it – is that different to a non-travel website carrying advertising? Seems ABTA is concerned about one but may end up causing collateral damage to the other.

Yes the UK / European GOV can regulate advertising. See medicine advertising for example!

On the aspect of clicking on links from e.g. an airline site or agent site, having purchased an air ticket, then going off and purchasing car or hotel, if this purchase takes place on a separate site, this does not result in an ‘inclusive’ price so I do not see how the Regs would apply. If the purchase takes place within the same site then – well I haven’t read the regs to see what the definition of an inclusive price is – so it may be the area where the protection is required.

Yes they probably will. And this situation may well alter with a change in UK government some time this year.

BTW: Talking of hit-and-run, why didn’t you reveal who you really are or who you work for? Comments from that organisation would actually be quite welcome. [Remember: IP addresses, which we always check with anonymous commenters, usually reveal quite a lot!]

Looks like the PTD debates will run and run…

In defence of Alex, Tnooz would not have published this post without that check and balance you requested.

Alex outlines the answer above quite well, I think.

Here is a statement from the ABTA official regarding the definition of a click through

“we are looking at aiming to agree principles and we believe ‘in principle’ that linked arrangements should be protected, but we don’t know what the definitions will be at this stage, there will plenty of opportunity to discuss the detail of definitions further down the line, and it is likely that Government will decide on those definitions.”

That might be simplistic but maybe you should ask ABTA yourselves before guessing what it might mean?