contact suppliers direct for better deals?

Janet43_2

I've read Martin's money saving tips for flight bookings. He doesn't mention the obvious: try contacting the airlines themselves. They often have special offers which the crawler-bots don't pick up. e.g. I wanted a flight to Dar es Salaam. After hours of nightmarish trips round the internet where the cheapest offer was over £600, I went to the KLM site, where they were running a special Africa deal, with alternative dates offering better suggestions, and it ended up at £450.

Similarly if I want to fly to Europe, my first call would be to the airlines that operate from our nearest airports, e.g. Thomson, Easy Jet etc. I've just been offered a flight to Amsterdam and back next week, for total £1 (plus £xx taxes, but that's presumably a fixed charge anyway).

vanoonoo

thanks - I have split this out from the web link thread as on its own your idea may get more response - hope thats ok - welcome to the boards

Regards

v

lily_the_pink

I have noticed this in the last 18 month or so - sometimes Lastminute or expedia dont always seem to quote the cheapest flight, plus on the BA site it is always easy to find the cheapest flights whereas with expedia or a lot of the others you have to waste time plugging different dates in.

Same goes with Hotels sometimes too - Hilton in particular and some of the other larger internation chains. I suppose the airlines and hotels have realised that if they cut out the middleman, they can keep more of their profit instead of paying out commission.

vanoonoo

lily_the_pink wrote:

they can keep more of their profit instead of paying out commission.

thats exactly what happens - although companies like BA havent paid comms as such since the late 90's early 2000, since the introduction of their "fresh approach" pricing structure.

its great for "us" though, but not so great for the consolidating companies that have the expertise and now no revenue (here speaks the voice of someone who made many many people redundant as a result of the changes and the down turn in trade preceding and as a direct result of 9/11)

as martin says - screw them before they screw you