This Yahoo! news link talks about how United is going to begin charging an extra fee (or start again I guess), if you don’t have a minimum stay wherever you are going.
Why do they care how long I stay somewhere? Is it just so they can try to increase revenue from business customers who want to fly in and out the same day?
My suspicion is that this is a variant of “screw business people” because they can afford to pay more. I would think that almost any leisure traveler would spend more than a day at a destination, while many, many business travelers will fly in and out of a city the same day.
Yes. Business travellers will keep flying even if prices increase, but leisure travellers will not to the same extent.
Agreed. On the other hand, it may now become less expensive to take another mode of transportation (e.g. drive) and spend a night rather than do a day trip. Travelers won’t like it, but businesses aren’t going to simply start paying huge premiums for day trips - most have a relatively fixed travel budget, and they want the most productivity. If that means keeping a traveler away from home, so be it. We can all work on the road these days, so the businesses are probably going to turn toward other approaches. Some can simply pass along their costs - those who bill clients for expenses, for instance - but most won’t have that luxury.
For trips that are around 300 miles, I would guess there is going to be a lot more of driving, going by train, etc. There will also be a lot more use of tele- and video-conferencing. It will probably put a lot more pressure on the regional airlines, who seem to do a lot of day-trip business (based on my completely unscientific experience).
This raises a few questions for me. Is the minimum stay thing only relevant on a return ticket? How much cheaper is a return than two singles, ie how much is someone falling foul of this minimum stay thing going to be slugged? With cheap but inflexible deals on seats these days, does anyone actually pay the full fare anyway?
Every time I’ve flown domestically (in Australia, admittedly), I’ve just booked the cheapest rate fare online from A to B and back again. If there had been an minimum stay for the cheap fare, I’d have done the the two legs on different airlines or something. If this minimum stay thing they’re talking about only applies to the more expensive, more flexible, full rate tickets, won’t this just drive people onto the cheaper, less flexible fares, thus losing the airline money?
I may be missing the point here, any illumination would be welcome. :dubious:
At least in the US, it’s often substantially cheaper to buy a return ticket (what we usually call a round-trip ticket) than two one-way tickets.
Also, keep in mind that the minimum stay won’t be obvious. You put in a start and return date and it gives you the fare. You can change your dates and get a different fare, but there won’t be an obvious “if you were staying the weekend your fare would be $X.”
Sometimes it’s substantially cheaper to buy the round-trip ticket than ONE one-way ticket.
Thanks. It looks like we don’t do that down here. Or at least it isn’t obvious on the Qantas website, seems to be the same price per leg one way or return. Maybe it’s different from travel agents or something? The US market has to be more competitive so it wouldn’t surprise if different rules applied.
Thanks for the responses.
I’ve always thought it was a bit of a strange business model to treat the biggest income stream (business customers) the worst (or, at least in my mind).
It’s logical enough. Business customers usually have to travel regardless of price. I might decide against that shopping trip to New York City if it’s too expensive, but often if a businessperson needs to travel their company will be prepared to pay more.
Won’t last forever, though, and the airlines would do well to realise this.
On the other hand, lots of big companies have contracts with their preferred airlines. When booking a work trip through our travel agency I usually get better seats than through the government travel agency when I do NSF stuff or by myself.
Southwest, at least, has the policy that 1 RT ticket = 2 one way tickets.
I flew a lot the last time they pulled this. My work paid for the hotel Saturday night to save on the fare, and I used it when I was going someplace interesting. Many people with regular week long trips did the alternating ticket thing (bought two RTs, each over Saturday, but from the destination to home and back. They then used them as RTs Mon - Friday.) I suspect the software is in place to catch this. They didn’t have a 3 day stay requirement back then.
I suspect that there are going to be even more teleconferences. Maybe the airlines think businesses are rich, but with the oncoming recession, travel budgets for a lot of places are tight, and there is going to be a lot of screaming.