White label, agency label and change in the weather

If recent deal history is anything to go by it is going to be a White (label) Christmas

• Expedia does the full online white label for John Lewis (large UK dept store chain) - first major deal with a non-travel retailer or activity based site;
• Sabre launches a full travel agency white label tool for dynamic packaging, matching (maybe bettering- will have to wait and see) Galileo's Leisure product; and
  
• Zuji has been quietly putting together a collection of Asian white-label partners including taking over the Virgin Blue Holiday business from Spree holidays and a reverse white-label in all of market deal in NZ with Gullivers (where it is all Gullivers in the back end)

Most of these deals mean abandoning the traditional desires of the various players (customer acquisition for the online agents and segment fees for the GDS) for the raw activity of chasing volume. I applaud the creativity of all these guys in finding new models and distribution but it does not take a weather man to know that a change in model can mean that the growth in the existing one is going cold.