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I think this is fair play, they can charge how they want (within reason) and it’s not too different than other bulk discounts. But someone should totally make a site for finding strangers to book the same flight with :)
Tbh this makes perfect sense. As someone who worked in airline revenue management for 11 years, it always seemed a little odd that the sales tactics people use everywhere else - group discounts, BOGO, etc - weren't being used by airlines (yes, group bookings could often get discounts, but usually for much larger groups). What's remarkable here is that airlines waited this long to do it. Sad news for me as a usually s…
> As someone who worked in airline revenue management, it always seemed odd that the sales tactics people use everywhere else weren't being used by airlines Remember the really old days when air miles were awarded solely by distance flown rather than by dollars paid? This made no business sense. It meant that someone who flew the cheapest tickets could rack up as many points as a last-minute first class business trav…
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Same with points systems. Why am I forced to understand your made up currency and status system to get the full value of my money. There might be some benefits to price discrimination (which is in effect what a point systems achieves) but the collective time wasted dicking around with points isn’t worth it. Make all point systems illegal.
The entire point behind reward cards, is to track every purchase you make. They're the original evil tracking device, so the airline makes money with those points. They do it by selling data, by points expiring, and by often only allowing points when seats would be empty otherwise. And often retailers pay more at POS terminals! This all ties into any rewards program. It's part of the package, even if points are grant…
I had a different experience with Ryanair. When you book solo, they show you price with a tooltip: "last 2 tickets for that price!" If you are going to book for 3 passengers they charge three of you with the next level, more expensive fare. But so far my favorite is they force you to buy seat if you travel with infant. You cannot select free random seat as their planes have rules to allow infants only on the seat nea…
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Well, they mostly don't. They're often using the same bedding. Most toiletries are squirt containers these days. I don't think toilet paper is that expensive. And another towel or two to wash is probably not a big deal. And to the degree the hotel has a restaurant or bar they probably come out ahead. Your hotel may take a different approach but it's near universal (perhaps outside of resorts) that hotels charge the s…
Citation needed. In my experience it's entirely the opposite: it's nearly universal that hotels charge more for two guests than one. You can easily verify this on Booking.com, where the search results show price per room and how it varies based on how many people are in that room and whether they're adults or children.
Larger groups are more price sensitive. They should pay less because they have more buying power when they buy ahead.
I think this is fair play, they can charge how they want (within reason) and it’s not too different than other bulk discounts. But someone should totally make a site for finding strangers to book the same flight with :)
I personally think it's fair if they charge by weight. The post office does it, why not airlines?
Economic argument: fat people are more likely to make use of on-board food service despite high markup, so you want as many of them as possible.
I think this is fair play, they can charge how they want (within reason) and it’s not too different than other bulk discounts. But someone should totally make a site for finding strangers to book the same flight with :)
I personally think it's fair if they charge by weight. The post office does it, why not airlines?
The problem with this isn't the difference in prices - charging less for buying in bulk is a normal thing that's probably been done by merchants since the invention of money.
The problem with this is the lack of communication. There's no advertisement of a bulk/family discount at any point during the pricing process, you just see a different price. That's the problem here, not the price difference itself.
Here is why I think these kinds of dynamic pricing practices are bad: it may be perfectly fair and legal, but it forces a non-negligible number of humanity to waste time and/or energy to figure out if it's happening, how to work around it if it is, and just generally waste human potential on something that should be a simple commodity.