There is no dearth of websites that offer air tickets at lower rate claiming that they have nexus with airliners and air industry. Some of the websites stoop as low as to claiming their syndication with flight ticket hawkers. However, the truth is better placed and quite interesting. Then, why is it not publicized as a normal fact? The reason is that, every industry has its trade secret and businesses of the industry fret its exposure.
But, now it is the time to lay bare the truth or the reason behind the ability of web travel portals to offer flight tickets online at a cheap rate. Out of the various reasons that could be attributed to such capability, some of the most important and impacting are as follows.
Two tier Competition
Competitiveness is the keyword that actually does the trick. And in case of online air ticket availability and booking over travel portals, there are two tier competitions. The first is in between the airlines and the carrier companies and the second level of competition is in between the web travel portals.
With rising numbers of airliners that are in business there is stiff competition between airliners aiming to increase the user base. Carrier companies use almost every rule in the book to tempt new users broadening their customer base.
In addition, they are not behind any other industry in offering freebies and other tempting cash discount offers ensuring that they are able to gain an edge in the competition. Then, it is the consumers who are actually benefiting from this stiff competition.
Further, airliners try to offer early bird discounts and also the last moment cash in discounts to lure some more customers. But in the last couple of years, this competition has reached to saturation and there is hardly any benefit to the customers from competing airliners. However the competition for sure has kept a checked on monopolistic tendencies.
The second level of competition is prevalent between the web comparison portals. Again there are two types of competition on this level as well. The web travel portals and the air ticket comparison websites compete among each other to offer the best deals on booking. And to gain an edge over this competition they also compete to gain best deals from the airliners.
The later allows the web travel portals to connect with low cost airliners, and even if it is not limited to low cost airliners, then the travel portals bargain hard to get the tickets at the lowest rate. However, it is not like bargaining for fresh veggies, it is more through air fare consolidators; thereby making such consolidators a major player in the game. A travel portal that is offering really cheap flight tickets must be having good association with consolidators.
Moreover, the competition between the air ticket price comparison portals are beneficial for the users and it will continue to offer benefits to the general users till the time this market saturates; which does not seem anywhere in the near future.
Cost effective mechanism
The websites that offer flight tickets are basically a virtual platform and employ a cost effective mechanism to be in business. The more they cut down on their input cost, the more they can offer to the consumers. And only on the basis of this principle, they happen to offer best air fare deals.
Further, the virtual platform or the website through which the business is being run is quite robust and does require least maintenance contrary to offices of the airliners and the travel agents. This further add to the advantage they gain out of the web based cost effective mechanism which allow the comparison portals to offer air tickets at the cheapest possible rates.
Real time feed update
In addition to displaying all the possible options of air travel between the source and destination the comparison portals rely heavily on real time feed update. This mechanism allows them to remain sharp and ensure that neither they nor their users miss out any price fluctuation or change in the offers over air ticket bookings.
Apart from the aforementioned factors that allow web travel portals to offer cheap air ticket, there could hardly be any other factor that impacts considerably. Though associations of the travel portals with payment gateways and financial bodies like banks and credit card companies do make an impact on air fare.
But such impacts are indirect and may be cloaked in form of offers or contests and are also occasional and not everyone qualify for the same; thus eliminating them from the list of factors that are exploited by travel portals to offer inexpensive flight tickets.
Martin Wynn
