Re: What you are describing is hardly new.
I agree, the article isn't a revelation. People will chuck money at all sorts of daft stuff. Have been doing since money - and daft stuff - were invented (or, at least, were discussed in Blue Sky stand-up-only meetings in the balloon filled, 50s style cafeteria provided for such productive sessions).
However, I can tell you where the travel industry would be without hotels.com - It would be in the high street, where it always was, getting people out of the house and paying them just about enough to have cheese on toast every night for their supper.
Now, all of those lovely shops - their windows gaily decorated with myriad posters of sunny and snowy scenes - have been turned into cafe-bars, the windows of which you can't see for the throng of smokers shivering* outside.
I have always assumed all of the travel agents - now replaced by three Chinese folk who spend their days photoshopping cranes from images of otherwise beautiful holiday destinations - are wandering around this Valley** everyone keeps talking about, trying to sell timeshare apartments to the only people left on the planet with a truly disposable income.
Anyway, isn't Channel brilliant? I hardly ever come here, but when I do there's always something of interest. If it isn't a discussion on the end of life for PCs, then it's a discussion on the notion - quite clearly correct - that most technology is both rubbish and useless, but makes quite a bit of cash before folk discover that's the case.
It's quite probably the only bit remaining that still bites hands ;-)
* Why doesn't shivering have two Vs?
** I once visited the Valley ... well, actually I think I visited somewhere near to the Valley ... You'd have to ask the lovely people I stayed with ... I was most disappointed not to be able to climb the valley slopes - or indeed, find them - to see what was on the outside.