Flight only bookings - war of words

A snowHead

Does anyone still book these via travel agencies rather than directly online? A war of words has broken out today between Ryanair, currently trying to recover its position on the winter snow routes where EasyJet has taken a firm lead, and the Thomson travel firm. Ryanair claims that in some cases ticket prices are nearly doubled when Thomson has added on its fee...

See full quote from Ryanair...

Ryanair routes for winter 2005/6 include destinations such as Carcassonne (Pyrenees/Andorra), Pau and Grenoble in France, Saltzburg, Turin...

A snowHead

If Ryanair want to compete, then they need to up their baggage allowance and guarantee carriage of skis. The up front price may be cheaper...but you generally will end up paying more in excess baggage.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

When I worked for Lunn Poly ( Thomsons basically) We didnt sell Easyjet/ Ryanair flights. To be honest I think anyone who books flights through Travel Agents rather than direct is making a mistake

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Elizabeth B, I believe that's part of their pricing strategy. I understand that a fair percentage of their revenue comes from freight so consequently they have less space available for passenger's baggage than Easyjet or BMIbaby.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

I don't get this. If Ryanair are selling tickets via Thomson's retailing of them, who is paying Ryanair - the end client, or Thomson?

If Thomson are gathering the credit card numbers of the customers and feeding them into the Ryanair system to obtain the tickets then the end-client will be seeing two charges on their statement - from Ryanair and Thomson. So the whole process will be transparent from the end-client's point of view - it will be on their credit card statement.

Can anyone in the travel trade shed some light on this?

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David Goldsmith, from my dim recollection of booking things, including flights, through travel agents, in general I paid the agent, not the provider (airline or hotelier), although occasionally the agent would ask me to pay the provider direct.

I have booked flights only through travel agents and the price was no different to what I could have obtained myself; presumably the airline paid the travel agent. I stopped using agents because adding another link into the chain just made mistakes in the booking more likely. I only use travel agents now if I'm doing a relatively complicated itinerary, with several flights. I've found specialist agents, such as Global Village, very helpful (for a round the world trip, they found the ideal ticket for us, which I hadn't found on the web, and provided some good advice and an excellent package for part of the trip).

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

Id imagine Thomsons must have a system whereby they book it online on a separate system to the website everyone can access. Take the money from the client, and then receive and invoice from Ryanair. Think thats how it usually works.

Client received information only from Thomson as they give only the clients name to Ryanair.

After all it is free

I saw in a travel agent's window at the weekend (independent not a chain) that they would book easyjet, Ryanair and Flybe flights at a booking charge of £15 per person. Why would anyone go through a TA when you can do it so easily yourself on the internet or phone!

Hannah, I'm guessing that there are still a lot of people out there who are internetphobic. I only have to look around my office at work to see people who struggle with any IT...and it's part of their job! Start thinking about those in their 70s/80s who never had to use a computer at work and £15 isn't a bad deal.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

because you want to pay cash... Laughing

my mother (read 'living in the past') doesn't use the internet, can just about cope with cheques and hates those menu systems on phones... she likes to speak to a person when dealing with anything!

ok - going off on a tangent but these things are commonplace for those of us that use a discussion forum - but are alien to people that aren't net connected and may not be part of the 'electronic cash' world, and they do pay more for most things.

p.s. mum is moving on - I buy her flight tickets for her at the moment and she got a pc for christmas!

And I wouldn't travel Ryanair for a proper holiday if you paid me. I would risk it for a cheap getaway - but too much risk of it going wrong for a main holiday...

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

"A war of words" indeed. Ryanair's just peeved that Thomson's making a profit where Thomson customers are too lazy/ignorant to care about how Thomson arranges their flights. Petty. Mark-ups are how the travel industry makes it's money. There's nothing illegal/immoral with a travel agent arranging a flight and hiking the price to the end customer.

Hannah yes, some people are just lazy/ignorant and don't have any interest in how the travel agent goes about booking the different aspects of their trip. Sad but true, some people really are THAT lazy that they don't care to notice that they're paying their travel agent to make a few clicks on Ryanair's website.... C'est la vie - if some customers want to be fleeced, that's their perrogative.

As Nadenoodlee points out for practical purposes it doesn't matter how Thomson's doing it - if the customer is buying a package deal then they will never be told by Thomson of the true price of their Ryanair's tickets, as the "flight" aspect of the package is bundled into the package price. Even if the flight cost is listed separately, Thomson would only show the price THEY charge the customer, not the price it cost Thomson.

A high street Thomson agent once offered to book me separate Flybe air tickets from Soton coz their package deal flights were all gone - and quoted me a price in excess of what Flybe's website were offering for exactly the same flights. The words "disgusted", "obvious" and "fleecing" led me to book everything myself. But then I'd rather a travel agent didn't pocket my money for doing something I'm quite capable of doing myself, for free, in half the time and with half the fuss. And I get it right more often wink

snow reports

Manda, what I don't understand about your analysis is that it assumes that Thomsons are buying the tickets, as a client of Ryanair. If that was the case, Ryanair would simply refuse their bookings, instead of making their complaint.

The complaint presumably arises because Ryanair are unable to work out if a flight booking is made by the passenger, or by Thomson as the passenger's 'proxy'.

One can understand why Ryanair are up in arms - their whole marketing strategy is based on being seen as the fairy godmother of aviation by the passenger - not by Thomson!

I'm having a hard time seeing what the O'Lout is screaming about. He's getting full posted value for the seats sold, he's not going to get any more income if the customer books direct, he'll still get brand recognition with the customer and the opportunity to educate them for the next time they want to fly . . . There's more to this and it has to be he's losing money somewhere in the process. Could Thompson be pre booking seats early at a pennies and selling on to customers at less than they'd pay if they booked direct with O'Lunchbox?
Money and him not getting it is what's at the root of this.

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

eEvans, I'm not sure that I agree with your view that TA's mark ups are immoral. They are providing a service which the client wants, otherwise the client would do it themselves. As I said in my earlier posting, a specialist TA found my family RTW tix which were exactly what we wanted and very reasonably priced. I'd done a fair amount of internet research and hadn't found them, and wouldn't necessarily have recognised them as being what we needed if I had. I assume that the TA made a few quid on the deal, which is fine by me.

Regular high street TAs are an almost complete waste of space and just get in the way. Are there any high street TAs who are not TOs these days?

On your last point, I've found it impossible to beat TO's prices to N.America. I wouldn't normally use one to Europe, 'though.

A snowHead

richmond, Internet booking engines, even though they are front-ending the same GDS as used by 'High Street' TAs are VERY poor at doing multi-sector or complex routeings or some specialist conditions, hence the fact that you had to go into a TA to 'find' the price and routeing I would suggest. I suspect in your example BTW that the TA took his 'commission' off the airlines concerned - no question of mark-ups . I could never reccomend anyone to look online for multi-sectors ... unless you knew what you were doing and understood fare rules and regulations and those people would be able to check on the native GDS anyway. rolling eyes

I acccept 'fees' are OK BTW only when there are questionnable ethics involved - and it is 'illegal' - do I get annoyed at their behaviour.

You would be surprised how many High Street TAs are thriving and doing well.! Strangely it is the TOs who have suffered more from the internet revolution ( losing independent type travellers...)

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Flight only bookings - war of words

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