This is not a competitive response to Travelocity's recent announcement. It's a move to strengthen our leadership in the entire industry. We don't feel that we are engaged in a continuing fee battle with other OTAs. On the contrary, we feel like we are setting the market rates – or lack thereof – and it's up to our competitors to react.
[...]
we'd like to point out that Expedia was already charging a smaller fee than our competitors, so the impact to us isn't nearly as significant as it would be to other OTAs. We believe that if we remove this fee, travelers will reward us with their loyalty.
Will Travelocity and Orbitz respond in kind? There's no word yet, maybe because only last week they were busy out-doing each other on sunny sounding "price guarantees" that seem designed more to generate good PR than to protect customers.
"Fee Wars II? Expedia plans to remove book-by-phone charges" [Elliott.org]
]]>"This is not a competitive response to Travelocity's recent announcement. It's a move to strengthen our leadership in the entire industry."
Yes, sure, right. Spoken like a true Public Relations Professional. Of course, she'd be fired if she didn't spin, spin, spin any annoucement as some great triumph.
]]>Though, you'd think it would generate good publicity if an airline said something like "Since fuel prices are no longer 'skyrocketing' we have decided to do away with fees for checking extra bags" or some such.
But when hell freezes over, I can win the lottery, so bring it on!
]]>That's great to hear. Let's get the airlines on board with that. *waits for hell to freeze over*
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