As a new Travel Agent the sooner you come to understand the “few” things that make sense about airfare, the sooner the apprehension will go away about booking airfare.
Simple fact about domestic air is that you will be able to assist your clients to find a better price with some city pairs and some you cannot. Your knowledge and the tools you use will give you the edge and nothing more…There is no magic wand!
Enter airfarewatchdog.com and the eleven reasons you should at least be aware that this resource is available to you. They are different from other fare listings and here is why:
At first glance, the amount of thought and care that goes into Airfarewatchdog.com may not be obvious, especially when comparing the site to the other sites that list, rather than merely search for, low airfares. Like Airfarewatchdog, these fare listing sites do the fare searching for you, and when they identify what they believe is a low fare or a fare that has gone down from the previous level, they post them.
Most of these sites list more fares than we do. However, we believe in quality over quantity. Here are eleven ways that Airfarewatchdog is different (and, we think, better) than other fare alert or fare list sites. We were trying for an even dozen, but could only come up with 11. If you think of one more, please contact us:
1. We check seat availability for the fares we list. Many newly lowered fares have little or no seat availability. We try booking seats just as you, the consumer, would and if seats are scarce we say so, or if they’re virtually non-existent, we don’t list that fare. Other sites don’t do this.
2. We list Southwest Airlines fares as well as those of smaller airlines like Allegiant and USA3000. No other fare listing site lists Southwest’s or Allegiant’s fares. We’re the only site that lists and compares fares on all of these airlines.
3. We list most international fares including all taxes. This is a time-consuming process, but since many of these fares carry $200-$300 in extra taxes and fees, they are deceptively low unless all taxes are shown.
4. We list airline web site-only fares. Increasingly, airlines are reserving their very best fares only for their own Web sites, and these do not appear in computer-generated third-party fare databases. We hunt down these fares and list them. No one else does this.
5. We list promo code fares. Increasingly, airlines sell their cheapest fares to those who know the promo code. So we calculate fares with the promo code figured in and tell your what the promo codes are so you can get the best deals.
6. We specify when a flight is nonstop, because given a choice, that’s what most consumers want. A $129 one-way nonstop from Newark to Los Angeles may seem higher than a $211 RT with a connection in Detroit, but we list both because some people value convenience over a slightly lower fare.
7. We include all weekend fares. In general, other fare listing sites do not. Some weekend fares are not listed on the airlines’ sites and in their newsletters.
8. We shop for value, not just the lowest fare. Let’s say a New York/London fare is $400 RT on Friday for travel Monday to Thursday, November-March only and on Saturday it’s $400 RT for travel in July and August seven days a week (which actually happened not too long ago). We alert users to this very important distinction; other fare alert services do not.
9. We provide deep links to fare calendars to every domestic fare that can be purchased on Travelocity.com, Southwest.com, or Cheapair.com, and to Orbitz.com for most international fares. These links, which no other fare listing service provides, bring you directly to the flexible date fare booking calendar for the specific fare so that you find seats more easily.
10. We show fares from every conceivable airport that’s a reasonable drive from the original search airport, all on one easy-to-navigate page. For example, our New York page has fares from LaGuardia, JFK, Newark, White Plains, and Islip, NY. But our Newark page does not list fares from JFK because although the two airports are separated by a short geographical distance, getting from Newark to JFK is in practice rather difficult.
11. We only list fares that we think are reasonable. If a fare on a particular route is in our opinion abnormally high, even if it’s gone down $10 or $20 from the previous day, we won’t list it if we believe it’s still too much to pay. Other sites list all fares without regard to price.
12. Better organization. We list domestic, international, domestic weekend, domestic international, and Canadian fares separately, under easy to use headings.
Airfarewatchdog will help you see trends, see what drives pricing, and maybe stop you from attempting to quote airfares without having exact dates. You do need exact dates when researching a airfare along with any flexibility the client has with the dates to find the best domestic airfare at the time of booking.
