Airfare Research Fee

We have been in a quandry as to how to handle the growing number of requests we receive for airline tickets. While that might sound odd for a travel agency, please understand that the bulk of what we do is plan vacations. Most of the airline tickets we attend to are within the context of vacation packages.

You might remember that about 11 years ago airlines started reducing and eventually eliminating commission paid to travel agents for issuing tickets. At that time we were primarily a corporate travel agency. We had already started a transition to vacation travel a while before this happened. Today we are just about 100% leisure travel. We do almost no air.

We have found, however, that over the last several months more and more people call and ask for our assistance in working out air travel. Since the initial commission cuts from the airlines, we had been charging a "ticketing fee" for air. The problem with this pricing model is that we do the work up front, we provide the value up front..but the customer has the option of not following through with the transaction...and then we don't get paid.

So, for a while we have just been telling people who call for air only "I'm sorry, we only do vacation packages". Well, I don't like the way that sounds. I don't mind if people don't choose to do business with us, but I don't ever want to appear unhelpful.

I decided that we would move the service fee to the part of the transaction where we actually provide the value. Therefore, when we get calls for air only we let people know that we are excited to help them. We let them know that we will charge "X" amount as a research fee and will provide them a complete report of available airfares through various sources. At that point they can either have us facilitate the ticketing, or they can use that information in whatever way they wish.

I will admit that this form of pricing is unusual. However, it moves the fee to where the value is actually added.

I'll let you know how it goes!