Lastminute.com are currently being proclaimed as a great Internet success story particularly when selling travel but is everyone aware they are being given hugely preferential deals by the airlines?
Last week, a regular business client of ours asked if we had any good deals to Barbados, preferably on Virgin which he uses for his business travel through us where possible.
He wanted four seats out on December 18 and back December 28 and was hoping we could get him a good deal. The best we could get through any of the main consolidators was around £1100 flying on Virgin. He asked if we would have access to any cheap fares that became available and I assured him we would.
He then came back to me the next day to say he had seen what were obviously Virgin flights on last minute.com’s site for about £350. Irechecked all our possible sources of tickets but still could only offer the same much higher fare.
Obviously, he booked with last minute.com and the tickets arrived the next day. We now have a customer who will always go to lastminute.com first in future. He asked how they could possibly offer these fares as a very new company when we, as an established agent, couldn’t. Not only have we lost this business and, no doubt, business in the future, but also I am sure his confidence in us has been undermined. I rang Virgin, who were very courteous in their comments, and their explanation was that they only want to give such deals to one operator to fill, as they see it, as a niche market.
They said if they give everyone the same deal then all the other airlines will match it and so bring prices down across the board. Thispre-supposes that only people looking for last-minute deals will check lastminute.com rather than people with a more definite destination and dates looking for the best price. It also supposes these people are extra customers rather than ones that would have travelled anyway.
We could just as easily have sold these seats at this price had it been available and we have lost business and customer confidence. Virgin and other airlines are just being naive if they think they can sell their surplus seats at extremely low fares on what is currently a very high-profile Web site without attracting the attention of the industry and the ticket buying public. I hope they will reconsider their position before more damage is done.
Martin Churchill
Holmes Travel
Martlesham Heath
Suffolk