have been looking at flights to EU & USA/Canada for next school holidays starting around mid November.
There seems to be reasonable loads end of November to around 20 December & again 1st week of January, but outside those periods, many flights seem to be only 1/3 to 1/2 sold, which is very low only 3-4 months out.
Hard to cancel flights, as might have decent loads in one direction only.
With school holidays in Qld( & Vic I think) starting tomorrow & NSW in a week & most airlines having crazy numbers of seats unsold for the long school holiday period, what do the yield managers do ?
Do they
1) offer agents more commission? (heard that something like 65% of international tickets ex Australia sold by agents - not sure how much of that is online)
This would be self defeating if all airlines did it
2) dump prices further to public? (already doing that in many cases & not working - some airlines have student fares, under 31 fares, teacher fares) or to the industry ?
3) offer long payment terms by credit card at no interest, where pax might even be paying off their airfares after their trip.
4) all of the above
5) or something else, like free stuff, eg. credit for hotel/cars/trains/theme parks etc. etc. Obviously if pax aren't going anywhere at present, none of these entities will be selling anything.
or 6) offer individual travel consultants incentives like, sell $x of us get free flights somewhere, with a fall back if someone sells just short of the mark.
Many marketing managers are probably under the age of say 45, who were 18 during the last recession & have no idea how to handle recessionary trends.
There seems to be reasonable loads end of November to around 20 December & again 1st week of January, but outside those periods, many flights seem to be only 1/3 to 1/2 sold, which is very low only 3-4 months out.
Hard to cancel flights, as might have decent loads in one direction only.
With school holidays in Qld( & Vic I think) starting tomorrow & NSW in a week & most airlines having crazy numbers of seats unsold for the long school holiday period, what do the yield managers do ?
Do they
1) offer agents more commission? (heard that something like 65% of international tickets ex Australia sold by agents - not sure how much of that is online)
This would be self defeating if all airlines did it
2) dump prices further to public? (already doing that in many cases & not working - some airlines have student fares, under 31 fares, teacher fares) or to the industry ?
3) offer long payment terms by credit card at no interest, where pax might even be paying off their airfares after their trip.
4) all of the above
5) or something else, like free stuff, eg. credit for hotel/cars/trains/theme parks etc. etc. Obviously if pax aren't going anywhere at present, none of these entities will be selling anything.
or 6) offer individual travel consultants incentives like, sell $x of us get free flights somewhere, with a fall back if someone sells just short of the mark.
Many marketing managers are probably under the age of say 45, who were 18 during the last recession & have no idea how to handle recessionary trends.
Last edited:
