A Timeline of Online Travel Agency Battles With Hotels and Airlines

As Hyatt and Expedia face a July 31 deadline to craft a new agreement on commissions and other issues involved in their apparent negotiation impasse, it is useful to point out that there is a long history of such squabbles between major online travel agencies and their hotel and airline partners leading to at least a temporary severing of the relationship. These issues usually get resolved one way or the other after awhile, and the parties end up issuing upbeat and vaguely worded press releases on how they supposedly reached a mutually beneficial agreement without disclosing the nitty-gritty details. There are exceptions, however, and disputes are sometimes resolved in a not-so-speedy fashion (or, occasionally, not at all). For example: InterContinental Hotels Group dropped out of Expedia sites in 2004 over trademark, transparency, and economic issues, and didn't return for another three years. And Delta Air Lines exited more than two dozen websites, including TripAdvisor, CheapOair, Hipmunk, and a bevy of lesser-known sites, around three or four years ago and the airline still hasn't returned to let the outcasts sell its flights online. Delta didn't publicly state its reasons, but the issues likely centered around economics and use of intellectual property. The following list is not comprehensive, but details several of the high-profile dustups between the big online travel agencies and hotels and airlines over the years.

2002: Northwest Airlines' Flights Get Removed From Expedia and Priceline