Truth and Secrets About Discount Travel

Truth and Secrets about Discount Travel

To understand how you can get discount travel, it helps to bajatraveler.net how the travel industry works. Probably the single most important thing to remember about the travel industry is that it’s based on a perishable commodity. If an airplane takes off with empty seats or a cruise ship sails with empty cabins, the opportunity to make money from them is gone. Unlike other industries, a hotel can’t store last night’s vacancies in inventory and sell them at a later date. Vacancies must be filled on a daily basis to stay in business.

The travel industry has high fixed costs. Airlines, cruise ships, and hotels are expensive to build, maintain, and fuel. No doubt the travel industry would like to sell every seat, cabin, and room at the highest rate. More often, however, vacancies have to be discounted to attract willing buyers. It almost all cases, it is better to get some money for a ticket or key card than nothing.

Travel and hospitality providers understand that vacancies require varied rates to get filled. For much of the travel industry, the main commodity makes enough money to pay expenses. But to ensure profitability, other profit centers must be continuously introduced. For example, cruise ships make most of their profit once travelers are on board by offering hundreds of opportunities to spend more money. Profit centers include alcoholic beverages, tips, gambling, bingo, spa services, internet and phone services, fine art and antique auctions, on-board shops, port excursions, port shopping trips, and much more.

So to capture those willing buyers who spend more once on board, the travel industry offers a range of prices to appeal to different pocketbooks. Travelers can pay radically different fees for the same service. Here are three major factors that affect prices: when you travel, when you purchase, and who you are.

When You Travel-Traveling during higher traffic times also carries higher price tags. So to get better deals, choose times when traffic is lighter for the places you’re traveling to and from. This principle applies not only to the time of year, but also the time of the week and day. In the US, travel is lighter Tuesday through Thursday. And a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles might be cheaper at noon than two hours earlier. You can use travel web sites, such as orbitz.com, to check prices for dates and times, avoiding holidays for places you’re traveling between.

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