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(c) Elliott Publishing.

What's Wrong With Bias?
Kirby's Korner · October 13, 2000

When is bias not bias? Can bias ever be good? Should it ever be permitted?

These aren't philosophical questions being argued abstractly in a class on brotherly love. Instead, they'll guide decisions now being made on how you and I will buy airline tickets online during the coming years.

A week ago, Travelocity.com joined other online travel industry retailers in arguing that U.S. Department of Transportation regulations prohibiting display bias of airline fares be extended to online travel sites.

But three days later, USA Today reported that Travelocity "will be able to offer discounts to consumers registering on its site for the first time" in six months.

Just as it will soon distinguish among site visitors, Travelocity already distinguishes among airlines. It runs a series of advertising campaigns from airlines, each a few days or weeks long, that include discounted fares.

These campaigns don't technically "bias" the display of fares from airlines posted on Travelocity. That is, the discounted fares don't rise to the top of lists visitors see because of the identity of the airline. But they have the same effect: the discounted fares are at the top of the display list because they're discounted fares.

Travelocity is sensitive to this distinction. Even when calling for the extension of anti-display-bias rules to online travel agencies, the world's largest online travel retailer said the anti-bias rules should be distinguished from advertising.

"Online advertising is good for consumers and competition, as it increases the number of fare sales and informs consumers about special deals," said Travelocity president and CEO Terry Jones.

Travelocity is being too timid. Let's call a spade a spade and do away with anti-bias rules in online travel altogether.

That's the position of online travel upstart Orbitz, the airline-owned online travel agency that plans to launch in June, nine months behind its initial schedule.

Travelocity's careful tightrope walking between fair fare displays and advertising is an obvious reaction to Orbitz, who last month told the Transportation Department it should not apply fare-display rules to the online world.

The arguments date back to 1984, when the federal government said Global Distribution Systems (GDSs) -- the massive computer systems travel agents access to book airline tickets -- must offer at least one unbiased display of fares. At the time, the airlines owned the GDSs completely. That's now changing.

The Transportation Department is looking at whether the rules should continue at all and, if so, whether they should apply to the Travelocitys and Expedias of the world.

There are good reasons to require the GDSs to offer unbiased fare displays. The GDSs are distributors; they don't sell directly to the public but, instead, offer services to travel retailers. Those retailers sell travel through storefront agencies and, more recently, through online travel stores.

It's difficult for the retailers to change the GDS they use. Contracts are long and often tied to leased computer equipment, making small agencies, in particular, a captive audience.

But why should online agencies have to follow the same rules when displaying fares to you and me? If Orbitz wants to, let it show fares from an owner -- say, American Airlines -- at the top of a display. Travelers will either buy the ticket, root around Orbitz for a cheaper fare, or, with the click of a mouse, go to another Web site to look for cheaper fares.

If we're going to prohibit bias, why allow online agencies an exemption for something they label "advertising"? If bias is good as a result of advertising, why isn't it good as a result of other marketing decisions?

Bias more clearly differentiates online retailers, giving consumers one more way to decide where they want to spend their online dollars. Without it, we might as well have only one online retailer that reels out airline pricing information according to some "perfect" algorithm.

That, of course, is impossible. So bring on the bias. I say it's spinach and I say it's good.

David Kirby is the content manager at start-up company iJET.com and was the founding editor of Interactive Travel Report. His column appears on Friday. You can reach him at david@ticked.com.