The travel industry provides lots of good examples of price
discrimination. Traditionally this was achieved by charging premium
prices to customers and markets who demanded holidays in th peak booking
seasons (Christmas, Summer Holidays). Then the major operators started
charging differentiated prices depending the distribution channel (e.g.
loading prices up to sell via the high street agencies to make direct
sales more attractive to consumers);
Now the battle has moved on. Most of the major tour operator groups are
pan-European in nature. They are essentially selling the same holiday
product (e.g. 2 weeks half-board in Majorca) to many different
geographical markets and via many different distribution channels. Each
market has a different pricing strategy (e.g. the UK market is more propne
to discounted late-booking than Holland). Ideally the tour operators wish
that they could prevent consumers from searching out the best deal across
Europe. They are trying to do this by barring a customer in, say
Scotland, from booking with a tour operator website in, say Germany.
Of course, searching online has made the consumer more powerful. The EU
are not happy.
You can read more about it here:
http://www.holmanfenwick.com/l3/new/newl3c022.html
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