How and Why You Can Save Money by Buying Your Airfare Online
Copyright © 2005 Fly
Around the World Cheaper
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 see all of the sites that
resell airfare, be it consolidators or resellers, and see for yourself
who has the best prices.
We believe that you should always get the best price
you can get for airfare; that is why we wanted to share with you how
the system works. The more you know, the more likely you will be able
to save your hard earned money for the really important things such
as extra gifts, shows, and other activities.
One last word on this topic. Some websites that you
visit might actually be affiliate resellers. The hard lesson about affiliates
is that they do not always have quick and efficient customer support,
and they may not be able to change or cancel your ticket, if you need
them to do so.
There are many quick and efficient ways you can check
a site to see if you are on an affiliate site. I am listing two of those
methods below. Be aware of these things when you are ready to buy from
a site, so that you don't buy your airfare from an affiliate reseller.
1. If you mouse over a link, you will see the URL of
the link in the bottom of your Internet Explorer browser window. If
it is different from the URL that appears in your Address Bar at the
top of your Internet Explorer browser window, then you will know that
you are on an affiliate site.
2. If you mouse over a link, and you see the URL in
the bottom of your Internet Explorer browser window and that URL has
a question mark in it, then you will know that you are on an affiliate
site.
In conclusion, we do encourage you to shop around and
find the best rates on airfare. We only ask that along the way, you
stop at our site to see if we can actually beat our competition on airfare
prices. You might be glad you did.
http://www.worldcheaper.com
- Travel Around The World Cheaper!
