Volume 10 Issue 3 August 2012 ENTER Conference Short Paper 3

SELLING TOURISM PRODUCTS THROUGH THE OPAQUE CHANNELS

by Malgorzata Ogonowska

This paper analyses the properties of the advanced Opaque booking systems used by online travel agencies in conjunction with their traditional transparent booking system. In section 2 an updated literature review is presented. This review underlines the interest and the specificities of Opaque goods in the Tourism Industry. It also characterises properties of the Name-Your-Own-Price channel introduced by Priceline and the Opaque channel developed by Hotwire. Then, in section 3, the possibility of joint-implementation of more than one opaque booking system by an online intermediary is discussed. Finally, in section 4, intuitions and preliminary results are presented.

Keywords: Opaque Selling, Name-Your-Own-Price, Pricing Strategies, Distribution Systems, Economics of Tourism, Online Travel Agencies, Probabilistic Goods.

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