Airline pricing is a complex, unpredictable beast driven by three ugly words: competition, demand, and inventory. Airlines call it "yield management," but we doubt if even airline CEOs fully understand it. All major airlines feed their available seats and prices into four central reservation systems that are owned by various airlines. Airlines then change their prices based on demand. If a certain flight is selling well, the price will increase. If another flight has no takers, the fare will drop until the airline gets some. As a result, fares and inventory are changing every minute.
Internet travel sites and travel agents use the central reservation systems which are updated periodically during the day. The systems also may use different algorithms to search for the lowest fares, which subsequently provide varied fares.
Airlines change their prices based on competition. If one airline flying the New York-Miami route drops its rates by 20%, chances are all airlines will drop their rates, so as not to give the discounter a competitive advantage.
Fare differences can exist for the same route on different airlines because of other factors. For example, if one airline has the market share for that route, it may not need to lower fares to attract passengers.
Prices for a specific flight can go up or down even as your travel agent is getting your credit card information from you, so your cheap ticket can be whisked out from under you. Naturally, the lowest fares draw your attention to advertisements. If there is low availability and high demand, you will have to wait for a cheap fare. Sometimes airlines will change their fares or open up more discounted seats, depending on how sales are going.
Regardless of whether you use the Internet or a travel agent, you will come up with a wide range of prices. The challenge is to know how to make the cheap fares yours.
Ask for the lowest fare, saying that your dates are flexible. If you can adjust your times to fly, you increase your chances of getting a cheap fare. Airlines typically attach restrictions to discount fares, like a 7-, 14-, or 21-day advance purchase and/or a Saturday night stay. Keep checking. It behooves airlines to have full planes, so they may add discount seats without warning. Ask about senior discounts or student discounts. Check smaller discount airlines that may not be included in the central reservation systems. These smaller airlines usually only have area-specific flights available (e.g., the Southeast), but they are much cheaper than the big airlines. So especially consider them if you're not travelling too far.
Join a travel club. Fly on a mid-weekday. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the cheapest days to fly. A consolidator is an intermediary company that buys tickets at a discount directly from the airline. Here are the web sites of some ticket consolidators. They use the central reservation systems to find cheap fares but also offer some tickets at an even greater discount.
www.lowestfare.com
www.cheapseats.com
www.cheaptickets.com
3. USE THE INTERNET
It has given you, the customer, access to the same computer systems that travel agents use (that's why travel agents always seem so sad nowadays . . . ). Not everyone who finds their best rate online actually buys online, instead turning to the airline or a travel agent. Below is a review of some of the most popular Internet travel sites by category.
Trip planners
These sites have several services that slice and dice your flight inquiries in any number of ways. They can search one-way trips, round trips, each leg of the trip, by price, by date, by time, and by multiple airports. Travelocity.com has airplane seat maps for 13 airlines, in case you want to choose your seat too. Many trip planning sites also have hotel room finders and car rental options. Cheaptickets.com has a Fare Aware option that shows what other passengers paid for a certain trip at the same time last year. For the top 1,000 routes in the United States, the service shows the average price, average number of passengers, what a one-way trip costs, the airline that flies that route the most often, and the low-fare courier rate. Popular sites include:
www.expedia.com
www.travelocity.com
www.travel.americanexpress.com
travel.yahoo.com
www.cheaptickets.com
www.webflyer.com
It also advertises the latest travel bargains and ongoing airline sales.
Auction sites
At reverse auctions, individuals specify the price they will pay for a seat and the airlines either agree to the price or not.
Reverse auction sites include www.priceline.com and www.expedia.com, a Microsoft-owned travel site that has a feature enabling customers to name their price. Regular auction sites include SkyAuction.com, which sells available airline tickets and vacation packages. Airline sites
Finally, one way to use the Internet to check for prices is to go to the airline sites directly. Many airlines have lower fares that you can only get when you book online or when you buy an e-ticket (a paperless ticket). So don't overlook them when searching for fares. Use any search engine, such as www.yahoo.com or www.altavista.com, and enter the airline of your choice to get to its site. While the Internet travel sites are unbeatable resources that enable you to see the range of available prices, there is no one site that can guarantee the lowest fare -- no matter what they advertise. A recent search for flights from Boston to Toronto, Canada, on the above sites turned up "lowest fares" ranging from $222 to $500 at a variety of times and airlines.
4. USE A TRAVEL AGENT
Travel agents have an edge over Internet travel sites, because they are trained to work the system. Travel agents know how to use the central reservation systems better and faster to unearth information. Typically, airlines outside the systems are the smaller, discount airlines. Internet travel sites also provide these services, but like the airline searches, they require an affinity for entering dates and specifying choices.
Agents make 5% commission on airplane tickets, which is capped at $50 for a round-trip and $25 for a one-way domestic ticket.
The commission system could also affect how hard they search for the cheapest tickets. While travel agents say they actively pursue the lowest fare for each customer, how much time would you spend tracking down a $200 ticket rather than selling the $500 one? Which ticket makes your 5% commission bigger? That's why you should still do your own independent research on the Internet, even if you use a travel agent (and vice versa). If you find a lower price, throw it in his/her face.
No comments:
Post a Comment