I'm working for kind of a big travel portal and yes, we are shitting ourselves to the point that at least I am considering switching industries. I'm not even sure they did it for the content as much as for access to the raw data.
Raw, massaged data. From everything we've been reading ("the industry worships syntax, not semantics"), turning those data flows into something comprehensible is a major trick.
ITA's start in this reminds me of the FU MIT delivered to Xerox when MIT bought their first big mainframe Xerox laser printer in the early '80s. Xerox wanted $100K to reveal the format, so instead a group just took one or more output tapes (a normal data flow was the mainframe wrote to tape and the printer read them) and decoded it.
Huh? How is this content? QPX is "searching" on airline provided content.
OK, you could say that a QPX suggested route is content, but it's algorithmically built from on the fly constantly updated airline content. Very much like classical Google web search.
You are right, it's not content. But currently many OTA have not much more to offer as content. The OTAs are pouring huge amount of money to get those reservations made on their site.
Do you think that Expedia and the rest are thrilled to see this move by Google. The OTA have stopped the disintermediation at consolidation and economy of scale, now they will have to go farther or someone else will.
Google is transitioning from search to content. The travel industry is now shitting themselves. Hotels will be next. Everyone else better watch out.