The new battle is for what industry-wide model will replace the current approach.
Quote from Alex Bainbridge at DestinationCTO in an article on PhocusWire this week.
Brace yourselves - how a deal changed the game in tours and activities
There have been lots of predictions kicking about in the last week or so (including here and our recent podcast) as to how Booking Holdings and TripAdvisor might shake up the tours and activities sector with their recent respective acquisitions.
There is no doubt that something will happen - the burgeoning sector is unlikely to stay the same with such a powerful player in Booking Holdings-run Booking.com muscling in, that's for sure.
But talk of changes in models (hello, TripAdvisor, entering a price war) points to a wider discussion about both maintaining the status quo and challenging it in all areas of the industry.
Industries evolve because there are those (often from the outside, initially) that are willing and committed to question why a process happens in a particular way.
The travel business is no stranger to those seeking to overhaul business models or an existing methodology.
Think, generally, about the entry of online travel itself in the mid-1990s, for example.
The emergence of web-based consumer buying at a huge scale, driven in part by Booking.com, eventually led to changes in how hotel contracting was handled and how payments were processed.
More recently, airline distribution was given a shot in the arm of business model shift adrenalin when IATA's New Distribution Capability scared the hell out of intermediaries and global distribution systems.
The initial concern that got large swathes of stakeholders hot under the collar revolved around what was perceived to be a massive change in how players got paid in various parts of the food chain.
The reality was that it all worked for everyone in the end - but lots of column inches were taken up with commentators decrying or praising how the model will change.
The point here is that business models will change - the travel industry cannot rely on the adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" for every time a challenge to an existing structure is proposed.
Technology generally makes processes and protocols more efficient over time, which ultimately (and hopefully) allows for reinvestment elsewhere in important elements such as customer experience.