Google Cut Off an Online Travel Company and Sent In the Bill Collectors

While there has been much discussion about Google taking an inflexible approach toward travel companies’ pandemic-driven past-due bills, and many figured out a way to pay them, Google actually cut off and banned advertisements from a well-known online travel company.

The CEO discussed the issue under the proviso that his company would not be publicly identified because he’d still like to work out something with Google. Anyone in the online travel industry would know the know the firm, which is currently banished from advertising in Google channels.

Meanwhile, a third-party collection agency that Google uses is trying to force payments.

When the online travel company’s revenue fell into the coronavirus abyss with a 90 percent drop in March, the executive told his Google account reps that he wouldn’t be able to pay the outstanding bills until a travel industry recovery took place or the firm secured new financing.

“They rejected a payment plan without presenting an alternative and froze our accounts,” the CEO said. “They are telling us we need to pay all outstanding invoices in full before they will reactivate our accounts.”

A recent Google search that previously would have triggered this company’s advertisements, found none. Instead, we found the first free link for the company in a different kind of abyss — page three of Google search results. That’s the online equivalent of when a tree silently falls in a forest because there’s no one around to hear it.

While the CEO’s Google account representatives were sympathetic about his company’s plight, he contended that Google’s finance unit operates autonomously from sales, and quickly handed off the account to the collection agency. He said other advertising platforms have shown more flexibility, and that fortunately his company is not as dependent on Google and Facebook as are many others.

“If Google isn’t careful, they’ll wake up one morning and the only travel advertisers they have left participating in their auction will be Booking and Expedia,” he said.

We relayed the basics of the story to a Google spokesperson, who said: “During the pandemic, we’ve been working hard with our partners in the travel industry to help them protect their businesses and look toward recovery. We launched new tools for airlines so they can better predict consumer demand and plan their routes. For hotels, we expanded our ‘pay per stay’ program globally to shift the risk of cancellation from our partners to us. And we’ve updated our search products so consumers can make informed decisions when planning future travel, further reducing the risk of cancellation.”

There’s Google and Then There’s Everyone Else

While the global travel industry faces its greatest crisis since Adam and Eve got a one-way ticket out of paradise, Google parent Alphabet saw its second quarter revenue fall a teeny 2 percent to $38.3 billion on the back of incremental improvements in its advertising business.

While Google sends collection agencies to erstwhile advertising partners in distress, Google itself has the resources to keep on gaining market share in assorted travel sectors with design and/or sometimes commercial tweaks to its hotel, vacation rental, and tours and activities businesses.

Skift broke the story Monday that Google is gradually rolling out a new commercial unit for advertisers, and a new user experience, in tours and activities, or in Google’s parlance, “Things to do.” Using its dominance in search, and demanding perpetual content licenses from participating advertisers, Google will undoubtably increase its foothold in this sector, and make advertising more costly for vendors.

Since publishing the article Monday, Skift has learned that this new Google ad product is live in 10 cities: Las Vegas, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Singapore, Dubai, Berlin, Rome, Barcelona, and Tokyo. In addition to Viator, GetYourGuide, and Tiqets, which we reported, participating advertisers also include Musement and Klook. Participation is “free” for now via Google-provided advertising credits, but Google will likely begin charging participating companies once it works out the product kinks.

Various antitrust probes are beating down on Google in the United States and Europe, but it is tough to see where this is all headed, and how any prospective remedies might impact Google’s travel businesses specifically. For example, efforts to curtail Google’s shopping-business practices in Europe have so far been mostly ineffective.

In Brief

Booking.com to Hotels: Lean on Me

Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel is confident that hotels will be even more inclined because of the coronavirus collapse to engage with his company to attract guests. As he said during the company’s Q2 earnings call August 6, many hotels are dependent on big-spending business travelers, who won’t be arriving anytime soon, so leisure-traveler-oriented Booking is there to put heads on pillows.

“They don’t operate in the number of languages we do,” Fogel said, referring to hotels. “They don’t do the customer service in those languages. They don’t have the sophisticated machine learning. They don’t have all the things — I can list so many that we do, and we do it in a fraction of the cost that will cause them to even try to do that. So it’s financially advantageous for them to work with us to get that demand.”

OpenTable-Kayak Factoids

OpenTable got a new CEO, Debby Soo, although Kayak CEO Steve Hafner, who had handled both roles for a couple of years, still has overall responsibility. As of the end of the first quarter, when Booking took a Covid-19-induced impairment charge for the OpenTable and Kayak reporting unit, the combo’s fair market value was $1.5 billion. Skift

Google Adds Availability Data

Online travel agencies in Europe have been slammed for pressure-selling tactics within hotel listings such as the message “only 5 like this left on our site.” Google has taken a different tack, adding hotel availability information on its hotel pages like “89% of hotels have availability” in Denver for an August 20 stay. That’s not exactly a hard sell, and it’s great information to know for travelers who don’t have a destination set in concrete. Skift

Will Trip.com Delist From Nasdaq?

Rumors are heating up that U.S.-China tensions may prompt Shanghai-based Trip.com Group to delist from Nasdaq, and potentially go private. This all takes place after Trip.com Group entered into a joint venture with Massachusetts-based Tripadvisor last year. Meanwhile, online retailer JD Group digs further into travel with a strategic partnership with Trip.com Group. Technode

Weekends Without Slack at Oyo

In an effort to tilt work-life balance toward life in a work-from-home era, hotel platform Oyo told employees they won’t be required to respond to company Slack messages or phone calls during their weekend time off. In other words, it’s slack time, not Slack time. Business Insider India