Strictly speaking it really isn’t that new – for the past 15 years, since the first online travel agencies appeared, there has been open warfare between most of the traditional travel agencies and the traditional agency intermediary.
This is a battle that the smaller independent agencies have largely lost.
Read the full story at http://www.tnooz.com/2010/03/02/news/are-online-travel-agency-schemes-just-new-ways-of-feeding-bananas-to-the-gorilla/