Who else is unbundling?

I recently commented about the trend toward unbundling, which is particularly widespread in the aviation industry at the moment.

The New York Times recently ran this story (may require subscription) on how car rental companies are now joining the trend. It talks about, amongst other practices, "holding [car rental] customers responsible for "any and all" loss or damage to a rental car resulting from natural disasters", as well as abreviating the grace period for returns from 1 hour to 30 mins.

There is little doubt that this will cause a few headaches for travel-related websites. In 2004, a survey by Travelocity found that customers at a major US airport car rental location were paying, on average, 24.4% more (in taxes and surcharges) than the price they had been quoted when booking a rental car.

As a result, the major travel website were moving towards a concept they called "total pricing". Travelocity would guarantee their quotes would be within 1% of the final price, Orbitz were promising a perfect match and Expedia were heading in the same direction.

The unbundling trend is hardly likely to be good news for such websites.