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It's brutal because of lack of easy access to data, and more importantly, the ability to create bookings. IATA NDC API's should theoretically change this and get around the GDSs but I'm not holding my breath.

I've had a number of travel startup ideas but all were held back by access to data.

Define "brutal"

Booking has made money off travel hand over fist this past decade. It's highly competitive, sure, but for a reason since hotels pay massive premiums to these websites to drive sales.

Hotels have less of a monopoly on travel than airlines. Plus most hotels are franchised, so the brands don’t have an incentive to lower commissions paid as they still get their royalties from gross revenue, and it all comes out of the hotel owner’s pockets.

They and Expedia/Priceline were super super early into the game

I also found fares/options that I didn't find on other sites.

My favorite part was how the results were listed by "agony", defined as a trade-off between price and length of the trip.