|
How And Why You Can Save Money By Buying Your Airfare Online
Let*s start with an explanation of Online Airfares. It is
important to note that in the airline business, as well as with
most any another business enterprise, there are three distinct
tiers of sellers in the marketplace.
First of course is the major domestic and international airline
carriers.
Next, you will find the airfare wholesalers, who are often
referred to as consolidators. The consolidator buys empty seats
from the airline, and they resell those seats to travel
resellers.
Unless you buy a seat on a flight directly from the airline, then
you are often buying from a travel reseller, which sometimes
takes the form of your local, neighborhood travel agent.
Of course, the airline would prefer to sell you your seat
directly, because they will get to keep all of the markup for
themselves, thereby increasing their profit margins. But the
system has been set up in this way to assure the airline that
they will be able to fill all of their seats.
Let*s face it, empty seats generate zero revenue. The airlines
figure that they would rather discount some seats than to fly
half full. When the airlines sell seats to consolidators, they
often do so for as much as 70% of off the regular published
airfare prices! Since the discounts are so deep, there are a lot
of consolidators willing to jump in and sell seats for the
airlines. Imagine that.
This means that the person in seat 2B might have actually paid
twice as much for his ticket as did the person in seat 2C! This
is because the person in seat 2C was willing to shop around for a
better price, whereas the person in seat 2B just called the
airline and bought his ticket at the regular rate.
It actually happens everyday where a shopper will find a ticket
for half of what they would expect to pay for the ticket, but by
the time they get to the checkout screen, the ticket has already
been sold. In some cases, the shopper had the chance to buy
directly from the consolidator instead of from the reseller/agent
who is trying to beat them to the punch.
This is also the reason that if you shop for an airline ticket
online, you might find the same ticket at five different sites at
five different prices. Let*s face it, all of the consolidators
have their own defined markup on the tickets they sell, and each
of the resellers/agents also have their own markup on your
ticket. Everyone needs to make a profit, right?
But, some companies charge a higher markup, while others charge a
lower markup. Whereas the big consolidators might charge a $150
or $200 markup on the tickets they sell, there are other
consolidators like http://www.worldcheaper.com that charge only
a $50 markup on a resold ticket.
Before you actually buy your ticket, we would stronly suggest for
you to shop around and try to se
|
