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| Airfare pricing |
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Today the European skies are influenced by the fast growing number of new low cost/low fare airlines. These new carriers are characterized, from a revenue management point of view, by having what seems to be no rules in connection with their fares.
Pricing is based on One-Way fares, Advance Purchase rules are not publicised and fares are basically controlled “behind the scenes”, according to forecasts, prognoses demand and the competitive situation. With the Internet as the primary distribution channel these airlines have no need for publishing fares in the Central Reservations Systems. The traditional carriers are following this trend, adding more and more Web only fares, removing public fare conditions and instead use Inventory steering and “hidden conditions” to control booking classes and fare levels. From a Revenue Management point of view this is not necessarily a good thing, but this is what the market demands, so European airlines have to follow, and they do. These conditions forces carriers to keep close track of their competitors, but until now these efforts have been restricted to checking newspapers, ATPCO and/or CRS queries or searching the Internet manually. The information gathering is accidental, inadequate and it demands considerable resources to keep this information up-to-date. |
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