Some might say it's a storm in a negotiating teacup, but at the moment the stand-off between Expedia and Choice Hotels looks pretty serious given that both parties have lost the ability to work with another to sell rooms in about 6,000 hotels around the world.
Max Starkov of HospitalityEBusiness goes into detail in a post on hotelsmag.com, but the basics are simple: Choice and Expedia sat down for talks to renegotiate their global distribution deal; Choice wanted "flexibility" over a number of areas of the deal; Expedia didn't.
The current state of play is that the worldwide deal to put Choice's portfolio of properties on the Expedia platform, including hotels.com, was terminated last Thursday (October 15) and neither side looks like it will back down.
Insiders at Choice say they have their own direct sites and other online travel agencies to distribute their content, but losing Expedia - albeit temporarily - is clearly a bit of a blow.
Expedia also misses out in the short term, of course.
At the heart of the falling out is a disagreement over booking fees, guarantees over exclusivity (or not), best room rates against other OTAs and the ability for individual hoteliers to manage inventory and pricing.
But Choice's decision to not back down against what Starkov calls the "market bully" in Expedia does has the potential to trigger a wider round of aggregation by hotel chains in the sector.
Imagine if Choice was joined by Wyndham, Marriott, Hilton and Accor - to name just a few of the other huge hotel chains?
What would Expedia, or any other large OTA, do when faced with a collapse in the merchant model which, as some say, is propping up the agency business given that air contributes far less to the revenue pie.
Expedia, typically, is remaining tight-lipped over the whole sorry saga with Choice:
"Within the normal course of its contract renewal and negotiation process, the parties have been unable to reach mutually agreeable terms on a contract renewal."
It adds helpfully (hopefully):
Our customers continue to have access to 100,000 hotel properties globally.
"Our customers continue to have access to 100,000 hotel properties globally."