Comments on: Expedia and Travelocity Drop Booking Fees (Temporarily)

By: CF

CF — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:54:54 +0000

You can check with Travelocity but that’s a fairly strange number, so I’d bet it’s some sort of tax they’re passing on from one of the governments. I don’t recall if Travelocity was charging booking fees or not, but there’s certainly nothing illegal about them doing it as long as it’s disclosed.

By: Barbara Coleman

Barbara Coleman — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:33:55 +0000

i booked a trip in July 2011 with Travelocity and was charged a booking fee of $63.90. I thought these booking fees had been dropped by Travelocity. Is this a legal fee ????

By: John

John — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:20:16 +0000

FYI
Travelocity has brought the feature back where you can search all fares between any two cities for the next several months
Go to Flights home page and click the Flexible dates button after you enter the city pairs
It works for most destinations including international
Just saved about $700 roundtrip for two from ORD SXM using this feature
Highly recommend it
Cheers

By: CF

CF — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:56:52 +0000

Axel – I’m not sure if you have to be 18 or not, but you should certainly give them a call. Contact Maricela de Rivera at (562) 570-2674 or email at maderiv@longbeach.gov. Depending upon where you are in LA, you might want to try Travelers Aid at LAX. I actually volunteered with them when I was about 16 or 17, but I believe they weren’t big on going much younger. Still, call them and see. Hopefully they can get you involved.
http://www.tasla.org/

By: Axelsarki

Axelsarki — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:38:48 +0000

CF, how can you volunteer @ LB? I live in the LA area, and would love to do something related to LB.

By: CF

CF — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:26:00 +0000

JK – That’s a good question, but I don’t know the answer. Company contracts often allow people to fly multiple “preferred” carriers, so there can be some variance there. And of course, when someone who has a choice reaches their “threshold” for elite status, they may then start experimenting with other carriers for the rest of the year so they can see what else is out there. So I would imagine that most frequent fliers are on multiple carriers during the year. Add in the alliances that are out there and it really does open up options a great deal.

As for Southwest, well, they’ve done a great job of getting people to go to their website, but as they’ve turned to focus more on managed travel, they’ve started striking more deals to show up in the Global Distribution Systems. They are a significant player, especially in markets where they have such a strong schedule. If you want a short haul from LA, for example, Southwest will give you the best schedule on most routes within the state or to neighboring states. That’s invaluable for the business traveler.

By: JK

JK — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:26:54 +0000

CF–Interesting, as usual. One question I’ve wondered about: statisically, what percentage of travelers fly essentially with a single airline for nearly all their annual travel vs. the pecentage who fly with multiple airlines over the course of the year?

I’ve sort of felt that with company contracts, one’s location, i.e., one’s home airport, and loyalty programs, choosing an airline isn’t quite as big of a deal as we might think it is. Also, that price is seen as being so important, might apply more to the prices of the individual airline we favor, as opposed to the whole field of carriers we might be able to see on the online travel agent.

Of course, there is always the impact of Southwest. How do travelers factor in this airline, or do they, when they make their booking decisions?

Thank you! Will be moving on to solve the world’s economic problems next week!

By: CF

CF — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:36:29 +0000

David – I haven’t seen anything like that personally, but you can get a ton of fare info over at FareCompare.com. It’s still not as good when you need to marry availability with the fare amount, but it’s better than nothing.

By: David

David — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:33:40 +0000

Until a few years ago, Travelocity used to have a facility whereby one could enter an airport pair, and the website would list all filed fares between the 2 airports. Furthermore, one could then choose any particular fare, and see on which dates that fare was available.

Travelocity pulled this feature a while ago (and I wasn’t happy when they did so !). Opodo have a very weak imitation of this on their website.

Anyone ever seen anything similiar ?

By: David M

David M — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:24:44 +0000

I’ll comparison shop and book an online agency if they’re better priced, but that’s pretty rare. Especially with the bigger places, about the only time I see a better deal is if they combine two different airlines, though the last time I booked something like this was when Expedia put together ATA OAK-LIH and Aloha LIH-HNL for a last minute one way ticket. Sometimes, the agencies that specialize in certain markets will have contract fares, but I haven’t been seeing that as much recently, either.

For a trip I booked earlier this week, I used Kayak and the new TripAdvisor flight search to keep an eye on things. The one thing I didn’t like about TripAdvisor wasn’t really their fault; Hotwire’s database seemed to be polluted with low fares that were no longer available (mostly CO operated by NW) so those bad results kept coming to the top of the list. Finally, when I got the airline I wanted at the price I wanted at the times I wanted, I clicked the Kayak link to the airline site.