Airlines are in Trouble

The airlines face the following challenges in that situation:

• Keep the flights full
• Avoid price wars
• Retain high service standards
• Reduce fuel consumption

Reducing fuel consumption demands a lot of investment spending to buy new planes and to improve fuel efficiency of older planes. And this in times of weakened banks and severe problems in the credit markets. All in all, this is not a time where you want to be an airline executive. But what does that mean for expats and people who have family relationships on more than one continent?

If you have family overseas and if you want to keep the relationships going, you cannot afford not to travel. On the other hand, you cannot hope that business travelers and tourists will fit the bill for higher costs alone, especially in times of slowing growth, low job security and high unemployment. But there are still good chances to find reasonable offers if you do some things right.

Stay Away from Peak Travel Days

Avoid high seasons like Christmas and summer vacations, if at all possible.
If you need to travel during high season, book early enough, but not too early. Most airlines have changed their rules, and they require now a payment and ticketing only almost immediately after a reservation is made. But if you book at the right time, you can still save several hundreds of Euros, especially compared to the prices of high-season-tickets a few days before the flight.
January and February are good months for buying summer vacation flight tickets, and for the Christmas season are February and March, or late summer good times to buy tickets.

Look Beyond Public Booking Engines

You should be aware, that for some destinations, especially in Africa and Asia, airlines create specials adapted to the needs of people visiting their relatives overseas. These special offers contain often better luggage allowances and some extra flexibility, e.g. the opportunity to rebook a flight after ticketing instead of a “no change, no refund” policy. Please be aware that those offers are typically not featured in public flight booking engines. Only selected travel agents receive special contracts from airlines to sell these tickets. The airlines do not pay commissions to their resellers. So the travel agent fee can undo the price advantage. But in this case you have still improved terms and someone who can assist you to change a flight if needed, while you are far away from the next airline branch office. So my advice is: Look for a travel agent who specializes in air tickets and whom you can trust, then build a long-term relationship with him.

If you are based in Germany, you may try as well our TailorMade TravelPlan

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Ask Your Contact
Chances are that you know somebody living at the place you are going to visit. If that is true, you can ask your contact to book a decent hotel for you. Communicate clearly, what kind of hotel you are looking for. Otherwise it could happen that you find yourself in the perfect hotel, but way out of your budget. Or you could end up in a hotel with quite reasonable rates, but lacking services like internet access or sport facilities. That can be annoying and expensive if you need them.

Always Book Hotels in Advance
If you do not have the luxury to ask a contact person familiar with your travel destination for a recommendation, you have other options.

1. You can do a web search for hotels at your travel destination, and give the hotel you chose a call.
2. A huge variety of hotel booking websites is at your service.
3. If you do not want to waste your time with researching hotels through the internet, use your travel agent.

Important thing: Do an advance reservation. Do not travel and look for a hotel after you reached your destination, if you are not keen to pay the highest available rate the hotel has listed. Hotel owners know that it is expensive and time consuming to shop for a room to stay, if you are a stranger in a city. If you want to get a reasonable room for a reasonable price, you must do hotel reservations before you travel.

Hotel Booking Websites
Hotel booking services through the web will offer you many different hotels, ranging from the budget hotel in the industrial area outside the city up to the prestigious and comfortable 5-star hotel at the best available location. If you are looking for a decently priced hotel with standard facilities and services, and you are not travelling to the center of nowhere, a hotel booking website can be a perfect option.
For most hotel reservations you should enter your credit card information as a guarantee. This way you keep your room when you arrive late. If you do not show up, they will charge you one night. A reservation without guarantee will usually be canceled, if you did not arrive by 6 p.m. There is no cancellation fee without payment guarantee, but neither a room if you arrive late.

Special Offers and Booking through Tour Operators
For some special offers or during peak seasons like trade exhibitions or holidays there may a cancellation fee, and a deadline after which you cannot cancel your room. If you book your hotel through a tour operator as part of a vacation package, you may also face restrictive cancel policies. As usual: Check the fine print.

Luxury Hotels
If you look for your favorite luxury hotel in a booking engine, you may or may not find it. The very best hotels provide not only superb locations and excellent services. They are also choosy about their guests and use a very high published price as a first filter to keep unwanted persons away. References, e.g. via corporate contracts, can earn you a steep discount in the luxury hotel segment. If the hotel knows you already as a customer in good standing, you may also enjoy a steep discount from the published rack rates.
Some travel websites demand a best price guarantee from the hotels listed in their system. A manager who wants to hand-pick his hotel guests has a hard time to allow a booking agency any influence on his pricing policies. My advice: If you need hotel reservations for the luxury segment, use your corporate travel department or a travel agent who has access your corporate rate. If that is not possible, go for the low tech way and give your chosen hotel a call to ask for a room.

Priceline offers currently a 100-Dollar discount when you book a vacation package in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, & more!

The offer expires on August 14,2010.

Change Penalty only After Ticketing
If the change occurs before a ticket is issued, the airline will not charge a penalty, although the travel agent working for you may ask for a service fee. If the change occurs after a ticket is issued, a change penalty as specified in the fare rules of the original ticket applies, if you are responsible for the change. If the airline is responsible for the need to rebook a flight, obviously no change penalty will apply.

Different Rules for Different Changes
There are different types of changes of a flight reservation and ticket. Important is the time of the change. There may be a change

• before departure
• after departure
• after no show

The scope of the change is also important. There may be a change of the

• flight date
• flight route

Change Before Departure
If you change your flight before the departure date, a new ticket will be issued according to prices and rules in place at the day of the change. All conditions for the new fares must be met, including advance purchase requirements, ticketing time limits etc. You will pay the price difference between the old fare and the new fare plus the change penalty specified in the old fare. If there are restrictions in the old fare rules regarding a refund in case of cancel, the nonrefundable amount of the original fare remains nonrefundable. The last flight of the new ticket must be completed within the maximum stay specified in the rules of the original ticket.
The change before departure is pretty complicated. For this reason carry many special airfares a rule saying “change before departure not allowed.” In this case the original ticket must be canceled completely, the fare minus the cancel penalty will be refunded and a new ticket will be purchased.

Change After Departure
If you rebook a flight after using a part of the ticket, the fare rules in place when the original ticket was issued will be used. If you do not change the routing and find space allowed with the original fare for your new flight, you pay only the change penalty and a possible service fee charged by the travel agency or airline help desk for their work with handling the change. If you need to use a more expensive fare for the return flight, or if you want to change the route of the return flight, and the new combination is allowed according to the original fare rules, you will pay the price difference between the original return flight and the new return flight plus the change fee. The fare for the already used part of the ticket will not be changed.

Change After No Show
If you did not show up for a flight on time, or if you could not use the flight because of reasons within your own responsibility, and you did not cancel the reservation before the plane started, a no show happened. Many airlines refuse to honor or refund a ticket after a no show. So, if you are stuck in a traffic jam on your way to the airport and you see that you cannot reach the plane, it is important to call the airline and/or your travel agent at least to cancel the reservation to avoid a no show.

Change Procedure
If there is a need to change a flight, two steps need to be done:

1. the reservation needs to be changed
2. the ticket needs to be changed

Sometimes you will not realize that two steps are done, because the travel agent or customer support representative reissues the ticket immediately after the change of the reservation. Many airlines demand in the fare rules that the ticket must be changed immediately after the flight is rebooked.
If you rebook a flight directly through the airline website, the ticket will be changed automatically.

Delayed Change of Ticket
Some airlines allow to change a reservation without immediately changing the ticket. This can be useful if you know that you cannot use the return flight as booked, but you are not yet sure which flight you will be able to use. Your travel agent could enter a return flight and wait with the change of the ticket until you are sure. But, again, this is not possible with all airlines and all airfares, and there may be a short time limit for adapting the ticket to the new schedule after you rebook a flight.

Insiders Remain Silent
Few airlines allow it, and less travel agencies and online booking portals talk about the opportunity. Everyone is looking for a sale, and a reservation is not yet a sale. But the travel agent has to take care for every reservation in his portfolio, whether he has issued a ticket or not yet. Early flight reservations mean work for the travel, with the hope for a payment, but no guarantee for it.

Better Access to Early Bird Airfares
But for you as customer, an early flight reservation means the chance to get the early birds fare, without an immediate firm commitment. This is important if you want to travel at peak days, around Christmas, Easter Holidays, summer vacations, or as far as Asia is concerned, the Chinese New Year season, or if you want to attend a big trade show like the Frankfurt Book Fare.

For Airlines it’s Yield Management
You may ask why the airlines allow these early flight reservations for often less than half the price you pay if you book your Christmas flight a few days before travel time. Do they have money to give away?
No. Airlines sell only a very limited number of seats for these low prices. And the cheap seats for the best timed flights are gone within a few hours after being available in the reservation systems. This helps the airlines to determine very early the really hot selling flights, and raise the prices for these specific connections early on. The aim of any airline is to receive as much revenue as possible for each movement of each plane. The industry term for that goal is yield management.

Only a few Airlines
I have to admit that not all airlines allow early flight reservations combined with late ticketing. An airline which is very closely connected to its home market will know the sensible flight dates without testing the water every year again. But airlines with a relatively small domestic market and a huge global network, like Emirates or Air France/KLM do offer such opportunities.
Price Not Guaranteed before Ticketing
I have to add one word of caution: The ticket price is only guaranteed, when a ticket is issued. Before the ticket is issued, the airline may change the schedule, add a so called fuel surcharge to the ticket price, or withdraw the fare in total. If that happens, you are back on square one, and you have to pay the price as offered on the day you buy the ticket. In most cases, airlines give an advance warning before they withdraw a fare. But at times there is no prior warning.

Relationship with Travel Agent
For this reason the best way for you to save on peak season flights is to try to use early flight reservations and back them up with a ticket order as soon as you are reasonably sure that you will travel. This requires a trustful relationship between you and your travel agent. He does not want to work for free, and he will not do that many times. But he will be happy to provide this service for you if he knows you as a good customer, booking tickets through him on a regular basis. It also is important and a sign of fairness to cancel any reservation as soon as you know that you will not use it.

There are three general types of travel insurance you should consider, if you are planning a trip:

1. Health related insurances covering the risk of sickness or an accident on the road
2. Luggage Insurance
3. Insurance covering change or cancellation penalties

I want to make a few points for each category.

Travel Health Insurance
You want to have coverage of medical expenses at home. On the road you need it even more. The first step before buying special health coverage for your trip is a check of the policy of your existing health insurance. On the road you need treatment costs, including hospitals, and transport back home, to be covered. Very helpful is an emergency phone number, where you can reach somebody familiar with the country you are in. He may know the right doctors, have an idea which hospitals are good, and have a relationship with them. This may allow a settlement eliminating the need to pay the hospital before you are admitted.
But please check the fine print. Mental conditions are almost always excluded from coverage. If you have an address in the country you visit, or if you are a citizen of the country you visit, travel insurance coverage may also be declined.

Luggage Insurance
This type of travel insurance is straightforward. If your luggage gets damaged or lost during transportation, you will be refunded. But check the fine print for excluded items. Expensive gear, like computers, cameras, jewelry and obviously cash are excluded. There may be also provisions that you cannot leave your luggage in a car, or that some items need to be kept in a safe etc.

Insurance Covering Change Penalties
A classic form of travel insurance covers the costs of changing or cancelling a trip for a predetermined set of reasons. The triggers may include sickness, pregnancy, death of a family member, unexpected unemployment and more. Check the policy of any insurance for these triggers, because they are not always the same.
Before insuring against a change penalty you need to have a hard look, whether you really need it. The trick is that insurance premiums are determined by the price you pay for your ticket or vacation package. But, on the other hand, penalties for changing or cancelling a ticket are generally lower for higher priced flights and packages. This means, if you do not take care, you may pay 50 Dollars to cover a risk of 100 Dollars in case you need to cancel your travel project. This does not make sense.
But it is also possible, that a policy of no change allowed and no refund policy is connected to your ticket. In this case, you may lose the whole price you paid for your package, if you become sick a few days before you travel. Under such rules travel insurance covering change and cancel penalties make definitively sense.

Same Plane, Different Prices
But in one aspect, there is no change: In the same plane, especially in economy class, there are on each flights passengers who paid for their ticket twice as much as the passenger with the cheapest flight ticket. So one and the same flight can be an expensive flight, and at the same time a cheap flight. The question is now: We just want to leave the expensive part of the plane to somebody else! What do we need to do so that these flights are for us cheap flights?

Time is the Key to Inexpensive Airfares
The main keyword to get the a cheap airfare is “time”. It is the time, when you make your flight reservation, the time when you buy your ticket, and the time, when you fly. If you buy your ticket too early, you may miss some specials. Airlines bring their specials into the market, when they have an idea of the market conditions. For example, now. September 2009, airlines publish their specials for the coming winter, the travel season after Christmas. It would have been a mistake to buy a ticket for a flight coming February already this May. This is especially true if you travel in low season months. On the other hand it is much easier to get cheap flights for February or November, than for August or December.
On the other hand, If you know you need to travel from December 22 to January 5, it is better to get a reservation as early as possible. This means in late January of beginning of February. For a cheap air ticket in the summer vacations you may start to look in November. But if possible, keep your reservation open, and do not buy a ticket until January. In January, after the end of the Christmas travel season, specials for the summer vacations are usually published.

Minimum Stay and Maximum Stay Important for Ticket Prices
The other important time feature of cheap flights is a stay over a weekend in your destination country, and the maximum time your ticket is valid.

Ethnic Fares
Air France and KLM demand for their Visit Friends and Family offers even a minimum stay of 2 weeks. Other airlines have similiar programs. Since it is in Europe problematic to use the nationality of passengers to decide who can get these fares, other features are used to define this market segment. The fares of theses programs are sometimes only slightly lower than normal fares, but sometimes there may be stark price difference. And, what is equally important, the fare rules are more relaxed. Generally, cheap air tickets are not refundable, and often no change of the ticket is possible in any way. Ethnic fares target families who have roots in two or more countries, especially in Europe and in Africa, Asia or Latin America.
Ethnic fares and their cousins, like fares for military service people, are not offered in booking engines.

Cheap is not Enough
This brings another consideration on the table: We are not really looking for cheap flights. We want flights with well maintained planes, with an airline which will be still around when we want to travel home again, on a way as direct as possible, and that for a low price.

Add Hidden Cost into the Picture
You need to add to the ticket price some hidden cost, which are often forgotten. We have developed Maximum Value for Your Airfare to help you find and evaluate these less than obvious expenses. It includes a checklist, asking the right questions, and while you fill your answers in, it does the math for you. This way it is a real timesaver in itself.

This begs a question:
Did I promote a product, which I did not like? Or ist that new product just a cheap “Me Too” ? And, why in the first place is a travel agent trying to promote products teaching how everybody can book flights by himself?

Let me answer the last question first:
We are an online travel agency, serving customers who need and want an extra service not avalable, or at least not available for free in the internet, and offline. If you have a travel schedule with 2 or three destination points, we build a tailormade travelplan for you, consisting of open jaw flights, stopover-flights and one way flights. We show you the available options and leave the choice to you.
If you need to have a reservation, but you cannot buy a ticket immediately, e.g. you need the reservation to apply for a visum, but you do not want to buy a ticket before you know that you will actually be able to travel, we can do that also.

But it is just clear, that everybody can book a simple flight let’s say from London to New York. So we reasoned, that it would be better to offer some support for people who book their flights by themselves, instead of just turning the away.

This way I came to look around for products available, and I came up with Tony Morris’ ebook. This book opens a huge amount of reseources to you. Starting with links to the big booking engines, but also providing links to seat plans for the planes of different airlines, and tips, how to search for discounts. The book is thery good in that. But the drawback is, that you need a lot of time to check all theses resources out, figure out how to use them and then go and shop around for the best deal.

Here comes “Maximum Value for Your Airfare into play: We developed a clear and simple framework, keeping you focused and saving your time when looking for the right offers, and evaluating them in the light of your own needs. It comes as a series of videos, showing you how to find the right airports for your travel, the right time to make a reservaton, where to find the offers etc. It is combined with a script calculating the complete cost of a flight, and with a glossary explaining that “airline speak”, e.g. the difference between a “direct flight” and a “non-stop flight”

So all three products, our

• Tailormade Travelplan
• Maximum Value for Your Airfare and
• my Airfare Secrets by Tony Morris

are part of the same effort: To serve the customers according to their needs, not according to our need.

Yours for more fun while travelling

Johannes Stockburger

In short:

• Pay Business Class
• Outgoing leg fly Business Class
• Incoming leg fly FIRST (or vice versa)
• Last day to purchase: May 31, 2009
• Last day to travel: Jule 31,2009
• Number of seats for this special may be limited.

If you ever wondered, what’s so special with FIRST,
this is your day.
Use this rare opportunity.