Duff on Hospitality Law

Our OTA & Travel Distribution Update for the week ending Friday, May 5, 2017 is below.

• • Industry To Again Focus Attention on Distribution Duopoly [OTA].  In an article last week, Bloomberg shared details from an AHLA board meeting where the Association discussed proposed plans for a wide scale lobbying effort of the FTC and incoming Trump Administration officials regarding the practices of on-line behemoths Expedia and Priceline. A consumer marketing campaign based on the popular Monopoly board game was also discussed. The AHLA’s proposed plans also call for the Association and its members to better promote themselves as innovative and technologically savvy – words one often doesn’t use when describing the lodging industry. It will be interesting to watch whether these previously voiced concerns (remember the industry’s response to Expedia’s Orbitz acquisition, anyone?) have a larger effect on Trump administration versus the prior administration.

Hotels Plan Lobbying Push Over Priceline-Expedia ‘Monopoly’
Bloomberg Markets, May 5, 2017
The U.S. hotel industry plans to step up a lobbying and public relations attack on Expedia Inc. and Priceline Group Inc., hoping to convince consumers and members of the Trump administration that the travel-booking giants are monopolistic. The American Hotel & Lodging Association, an industry group whose membership includes Marriott International Inc., Hyatt Hotels Corp. and Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., devised plans for a campaign saying the online travel companies use unfair practices in their search businesses, according to board meeting documents seen by Bloomberg. The trade group intends to lobby Federal Trade Commission officials on the issue and try to ensure that new members picked by President Donald Trump are friendly to hotels, according to the documents prepared for a January meeting of the group’s board.

This week’s OTA & Distribution Update for the week ending April 28, 2017 is below. Loyalty program updates feature prominently in this week’s Update as well as story on some important changes at Airbnb to lure corporate travelers. Enjoy.

This week’s OTA & Travel Distribution Update for the week ending April 21, 2017 is below. This week’s update contains a variety of stories, including a copy of the now much-publicized New York Times article detailing AH&LA’s campaign against Airbnb and Airbnb’s subsequent response.

Both the courts and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) seem to keep changing the definitions of joint employment. It is no wonder this has left employers scratching their head about the situation. The cause for this itch is the analysis differs depending on the law at issue. For example, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), various state employment laws defining “employees,” common law (guided by the National Labor Relations Act), the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and workers’ compensation laws all have joint employer doctrines and associated tests that are slightly different from the others.

To demonstrate these differences, we will look at two of the most recent cases that modify the joint employer analysis under both the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (the FLSA). Both these cases define a test – but it is not the same test. Unfortunately, the lesson is that an employer or putative employer will not know whether a person is an employee for the purposes of a particular law without determining first what test should be applied for that law.

This week’s OTA & Travel Distribution Update for the week ending April 14, 2017 is below. Additional details regarding last week’s long-awaited report on online travel by the European Commission are featured in this week’s Update.

Below please find this week’s OTA & Travel Distribution Update for the week ending April 7, 2017. The recently released European Commission’s report on the hotel industry headlines this week’s Update.

Some interesting stories in this week’s GSB OTA & Travel Distribution Update (for the week ending March 31, 2017):

This week’s Update for the week of March 26, 2017 is below:

With my bracket totally blown by Villanova’s loss this afternoon, there is no time like the present to prepare this week’s OTA & Travel Distribution Update. This week’s Update features stories for everyone.

This week’s GSB OTA & Travel Distribution Update for the weekend ending March 10, 2017 is below. Expedia, Airbnb and Facebook are featured in this week’s update.