Focus on France Ian Sparks reports from Paris

EURO-REPORT

FOCUS ON... France

Ian Sparks reports from Paris on the battle to control online information.

France’s usually fiercely competitive newspaper and magazine industry is joining forces to prevent US giant Apple dictating the terms of their distribution on its hugely popular iPad’s online ‘Newsstand’.

Eight French national media titles have united to launch their own digital ‘kiosk’ – a downloadable application that will allow them to sell individual issues in defiance of Apple’s strict rules and hefty 30 per cent commissions on each online paper sold.

The move is the latest act of mounting media opposition around the world to Apple’s bid to exploit the massive appeal of the iPad for reading newspapers.

The Gallic press group of eight – which includes right-wing newspaper Le Figaro, sports daily L’Equipe, business paper Les Echos and weekly news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur – have also agreed to only negotiate with the American techology company as a collective to protect their interests.

Xavier Spender, an executive at L’Equipe, said he realised joint action by the French press was needed when he looked at the potential profits from selling a single online edition of his paper through the iPad.

He said: “I realised we would make less money selling a digital edition of the newspaper than we would selling a physical print edition on the street.”

Le Figaro’s head of new media Pascale Pouquet said: “In the world of the Internet, companies like Apple, Google and Facebook are infinitely more powerful and much stronger than we publishers. So it just made sense to us to team up and pool our own resources to try to have more equal relations with them.”

As well as high 30 per cent commission fees charged by Apple for iPad digital sales, the French consortium also objects to the US company’s determination to hold onto customer data, insisting publications using its Newsstand only get access to a subscriber’s information if they actually click on a button to allow it to be passed on to the newspaper.

Le Figaro’s Mr Pouquet added: “We are still in negotiations with them over this and we are ready to accept that we may lose some sales if we cannot come to terms with Apple. But sometimes it’s better to cut off a finger than to sever the whole arm.”

And consortium member Liberation, a left-wing daily paper, said it was also planning on launching its own web-based app alongside any agreements with Apple. Ludovic Belcher, who heads the paper’s digital editions, said: “We can’t be dependent on any one distributor, even one as powerful as Apple. And if they remove us from the store, we’ll face the consequences.”

Meanwhile, the group has already irked Apple by signing with Internet giant Google to sell subscriptions via a digital kiosk on its Android tablets, where they pay a lower commission of 10 per cent and have access to customer log-in data.

The most high profile French newspaper refusing to join the consortium is Le Monde, whose chairman Louis Dreyfus said he believes his brand is strong enough to attract users online without saddling itself with what he called the ‘slow group decision-making process’ of the other eight publications.

Misleading consumers

Elsewhere, a French court ruling ordering the Internet holiday giant Expedia to pay €400,000 to French hoteliers for providing ‘false and misleading information’ to its website customers has sent shockwaves through the online travel industry.

Expedia – the world’s biggest online travel agency – was found guilty of promoting false price reductions and false information on availability by a tribunal in Paris.

The Tribunal de Commerce court heard how France’s anti-fraud agency the DGCCRF found Internet bargain-hunters were given misleading information that certain hotels were full, then re-directed towards other hotels with whom Expedia and Hotels. com had commercial links.

They also accused Expedia’s sister site Tripadvisor of seeming to be a travel advice site while in fact directing bargain-hunters to other Expedia sites.

The company was ordered to pay €300,000 to French hoteliers federation Synhorcat, and the remainder to two hotels which sparked the initial complaint – the Hotel de la Place du Louvre in Paris and the Chateau Guilguiffin, in Landudec, Brittany.

French tourism minister Frederic Lefebvre, who launched the DGCCRF probe in May, said: “Nearly 60 per cent of French Internet users exclusively use the web for preparing and buying their travel needs. The accuracy of the information provided by these sites is, therefore, vital.”

The Synhorcat union greeted the tribunal’s decision as a ‘victory for consumers and hotel professionals’. Its president Didier Chenet added:

“We hope this will lead to a new morality in the e-commerce sector. We now call on these companies to meet to straighten out the situation and these abuses in contracts. If not, we will take Expedia to the tribunal again.”

Meanwhile – and with some irony – Expedia has also just been named the world’s leading online travel company for the Asia-Pacific region in the prestigious Travel Trades Gazette’s annual awards for 2011.

The company scooped the top travel agent title for the second year running, being cited for its ‘professionalism and excellence in staff, best value-added services to consumers and best use of technology in improving service efficiency and effectiveness’. n