Economy Class: Where Time Is Money
— -- Today’s travel world can present the unpleasant choice of saving time or saving money.
The Internet was supposed to open up a whole new world of bargain travel opportunities. In some ways, it has.
On the flip side, the complexity of deals, the profusion of vendors and the changing nature of the Internet travel world give us a lot of information with too little time to locate and analyze it. It’s not an accident that so many deals come with “Buy Now!” provisions.
Everyone and their travel agent’s dog wants to convince you that their discount is the best one out there. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m here to tell you that no single site has the best deals on everything. I’ll go even further: No air travel bargain site has the best ticket prices on every airline, every route, all the time — not even mine.
This can come from a profusion of factors. There are partnership deals that cause a vendor to promote one airline over the others, even when their prices are not the lowest. Partnership deals can work in consumers’ favor, if the travel vendor acquires negotiated fares or special benefits in return for the added hype. In other cases, you’re getting a bum steer.
Are Multiple-Airline Sites the Answer?
Should you trust an airline site with direct access to inventory or a site advertising multiple airline fare searches? Don’t trust either one absolutely. Each system has its advantages, but the airline industry does not have a sterling record in offering consumers’ the lowest fares; the multiple-airline booking sites almost always have preferred carriers. And there are other glitches that can get between you and travel bargains.
There is also a huge lack of inclusion of the low-fare carriers. If, for example, your cheapest ticket from Dallas to the West Coast is two Southwest tickets that cannot be sold as one ticket due to the absurd, lingering effects of the Wright Amendment, no major booking site is going to tell you about it. The Wright Amendment limits flights from Dallas on planes carrying more than 56 passengers to routes within Texas and to adjacent states.
If you’re traveling to or from Minneapolis/St. Paul, Sun Country is apt to have some very low-priced tickets — even for last-minute travel. While the majors are soaking you for not planning ahead, Sun Country does the opposite, lowering fares to fill up its flights — a big consumer benefit of inventory-controlled pricing. The majors may do this with their Wednesday sales for travel the following weekend, but they do not do yet do it in any significant way for business or other work week travel.
Fortunate is the traveler with a cost-conscious, attentive travel agent but the demands of that industry (and commission caps and cuts) has made it more difficult for agents to deliver a high level of service, particularly on low-dollar tickets. The best travel agents still give you unbiased and comprehensive information, but these days they work the best for travelers who purchase a certain volume of tickets. There just isn’t any profit involved in selling the occasional $198 coast-to-coast ticket, except for travelers who use the same agent for cruise travel or other more agent-profitable travel.
Research Tips
Buying airline tickets has always been a gamble. The airlines are notorious for filling a 176-seat plane with passengers who paid 99 different fares. If you want to be one of the people who paid the least, be prepared to spend some time on research.
Develop some bargain ticket sources that work for your needs. If you need time-specific travel, forget about the sites that fail to offer a choice of travel times. The money you save could cost you a fortune in time.
Check your favorite sites and check the sites of the carriers serving your market, to be sure you aren’t missing deals exclusive to the airline’s site. Be leery of “exclusive deals” that offer five- or 10-percent discounts. Except for some short-haul travel, you can almost always do better.
Find a travel agent willing to work for your business. Make your fare request call early in the day, before you do your own search. If you find a fare lower than the one your travel agent found (and if it does not require direct booking), let the agent book it for you. This may seem crazy, but it’s one of those “crazy like a fox” strategies and gives the agent a reason to work on your next fare request.
Learn the difference between sites that are only trying to sell you their own products and those offering more complete information. The first type can save you money but the second type can save you money and time. I have been called crazy (there’s that fox analogy again) for sending people who come to my site to other sites and other offline travel vendors for some deals. Most of the time, I can offer significant savings. When I can’t, I’ll save you time on finding the source you need.
If you purchase a ticket that can be exchanged (for a fee), keep your eyes open for a dramatically reduced fare and exchange your ticket for the cheaper one. Be very careful when purchasing online, as most tickets cannot be downgraded in this consumer-advantageous fashion. In other cases, there has to be availability in the seat class of your original ticket and all advance-purchase (and other) requirements of the original ticket must be met. When that happens — and it can happen more than you might imagine — the $75 fee and the time it takes to trade a $450 ticket for a $179 ticket is worth it.
I’ll close with one “off-the-wall” suggestion that can give you a good bargain bounce. If you have teenagers in your household, chances are they spend a good deal of time online. Give them the assignment of finding your best fare. They wend their way through the Web superbly. If they don’t want to stop playing “The Cyper Rap Goddess of The Junk Food Planet” video game long enough to help you out, offer them a percentage of the money they help you save.
Tom Parsons is editor of Best Fares Magazine.