Hospitality in the news - 29 October 2020

Your latest instalment of articles and opinions from across the hospitality sector.

TW:thinkingdifferently

Seismic news last week.

The U.S. Justice Department has finally filed its long awaited antitrust lawsuit against Google for allegedly abusing its dominant position in online search and advertising. The DoJ argues that Google is a "monopoly gatekeeper for the internet" and prevented competition in internet search. Needless to say, Google have a different take. Given the huge importance that Google plays in the hospitality and travel industry, and the enormous amounts paid each year to Google for search ads, the industry has broadly welcomed the news in the hope that this will increase competition and reduce costs of sale.

This lawsuit is the biggest antitrust case in a generation. Last time we saw anything similar was the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit in 1998. The Microsoft lawsuit took approximately 9 years to settle so don’t hold your breath – although there are likely to be a cascade of other legal actions against Google spinning off these proceedings as well as proceedings brought against other "Big Tech" players.

Do you know?

The world's longest commercial flight takes, on average, 17 hours and 50 minutes, whereas the shortest takes less than 2 minutes (if you fancy a trip between Westray and Papa Westray in Scotland's Orkney Islands).