Flight price advertisements
I don’t know about you, but if I see a flight advertised for a certain price, I want to be able to book a flight for that price. And the sooner the travel industry gets to grips with this the better.
Flight availability
One of my major bugbears when trying to book a flight is the inability of travel companies and airlines to tell me when their dirt cheap advertised flight is actually available. Phone up an agency or airline to enquire about a sale fare you’ve seen advertised and you can pretty much guarantee what the first question will be.
It is this: “When do you want to travel?”
To which my answer is: “I want to travel when the flight costs what you’ve advertised it costs.”
Circular conversation
This can go on in a circular conversation for hours. Monkey boy on the phone has been trained to think in terms of set dates, he has to put the dates in before he can get a price and – lo and behold – that price always ends up being more expensive than the advertised price.
London to Sydney for £499
I had a classic example of this earlier today. I was checking out a sale fare I’ve seen advertised on Worldwideflights.com for my Australia flight information site (Australiaflightbargains.com). London to Sydney fares were advertised for £499. I wanted to know when this fare was available for and which airline it was with.
Cheapest deal
After going through the traditional “which dates?” rigmarole with PhoneGimp, we ended up trying a few. Eventually, the cheapest deal he could find was for £559. This still isn’t bad, but it’s not what’s being advertised.
Increased taxes
I pushed him on this, and he admitted that taxes have recently gone up, and thus the £499 deal isn’t available any more. That’s disgraceful – it’s leading customers in with false advertising.
False advertising
I struggle to think of another industry where this would be allowed. Guys, if your systems can’t cope with the concept of flexibility, then get new systems. Until you’ve done that, don’t advertise things that your staff cannot sell. And if the products you are advertising ON YOUR OWN WEBSITE are not available, then take those prices down as soon as they cease to become available. It’s not fair on the customer and does you no favours as a company.
Tags: airlines, travel agents
How timely, I just wasted a whole day looking for these 499 pound fares as well, and there was nothing even close available to that price.
Had a wee play and came up with the following David
Malaysia Airlines – at £575 – think that’s the lead in everyones flogging.
1. MH 3 L 14MAY LHRKUL HS1 1200 #0725 O E
2. MH 141 L 15MAY KULSYD HS1 0900 1850 O E
3. MH 122 L 27MAY SYDKUL HS1 1400 2030 O E
4. MH 4 L 28MAY KULLHR HS1 1005 1615 O E
I think MH have raised their fuel surcharges for next year though. Explains the £70-£80 difference. At the moment its showing £70 less in my system than when you come to book it. Certainly a bit odd.
But as to daft fares – it’s simple – TA’s should pull them – straight away; it pisses off passengers hugely and is the bain of my life. I must admit I searched for that STA deal from Travelzoo on our systems and struggled to come up with seats in the whole of May. But I used to work for STA and they’re a decent company – and to be fair a lot of the time the issue is the loading of the seats by yield management departments in different continents. Still if its not available or there’s a fuel surcharge issue I’m surprised they havent pull it.
However often an airline will push a 5 day seat-sell or wave deal in say “w class” and when they offer it, there is availablity. The speed that this changes can be terrifying and requires constant monitoring. So “w class” sells out but “m class” which is a £100 more is available. Do you advertise it? I’d say no just because the ill-will you can generate if it’s not available is counter productive. Better to advertise something that is available. No brainer in my book.
About a year ago we decided to pull silly lead in fares and move to seasonal fares – breaking down the nett fare and explaining the seasons. It’s just more honest. The other option is the from price which I just think is not as good. Pretty popular with passengers we’ve found and I think it should be done as standard – just not too sure how many companies can be bothered or have the technical know how….
Thanks for that insight Stuart. As I said to you over e-mail, the travel media has to take part of the blame for this. We’re always after a headline lead-in figure in the factbox on articles. We should realistically be putting in average fare prices instead.
This kind of false advertising is quite common in flight fares, amazingly I always happen to “just miss the chance”. Very disturbing.
It’s a problem and one I have written about on numerous occassions. The majority of times these cheap rates are advertised To get people ‘through the door’ and searching.
I contacted the Advertising Standards Authority about this earlier in the year and the response I received was that it is difficult to prove that the rate advertised was never available as the airline can simply say that the seats for that seat sold out.
You said it David – whatever games the industry plays, the travel media should NOT be buying into them. This whole “from” nonsense has got to go.
For my travel guide to the Red Sea, published in the Indep today – http://bit.ly/6i7QDG (intended for info, not plug!) – I tried to use as many date-specific prices as reasonably possible, while still giving readers enough info to work with. To the Indep’s credit, the eds do good fact-checking – and, even though I’ve put in accurate prices – they will occasionally up them because they’ve maybe tested dates which are pricier: in that article, Voyages Jules Verne’s deals to the Kempinski hotel in Aqaba (Jordan) is an example: on the basis of this page – http://j.mp/5uzXYS – I wrote “from £697″ (ie the price for Dec 8th departure), but someone upped this to “from £777″ (price for Dec 1st departure) in the printed version, which, if you look at the actual prices over the period Dec-Apr, is heading in the right direction. “Average £1031″ would be even better.
But, most of the time, because the industry is geared up to offer minimum prices as a teaser, not average prices, it simply takes too long to research – for a hotel, for instance, it would involve making at least five or six test bookings online over various dates from tomorrow to 11 months ahead, at weekdays, at weekends, in peak & low season, to be able to generate an average room rate. I don’t get paid enough to do this across an entire 2,000-word article…
I just recieved an email (9th December) from KLM stating that you can book flights to Shanghai for £425. Here is the small print:
*Fares are for Economy return flights via Amsterdam Schiphol. All fares include taxes and charges, which can be subject to exchange rate variation. Prices are correct at 07 December 2009. Book by 22 December 2009 (except Toronto, by 21 December 2009). Travel periods vary. Restrictions apply. Prices are subject to availability and to minimum and maximum stay rules. Tickets are not refundable or changeable. Please check http://www.klm.com for more details.
Plenty of clauses that help KLM to avoid actually letting you buy a ticket for that price but I particularly enjoyed reading the part that says “Prices are correct at 07 December 2009.” Brilliant. If you’re going to send out an offer, surely you should at least ensure the prices are correct as of the day the offer goes out? No? Oh.