In Travel, Does Only the Chump Pay Full Price? Yep, That's Often the Case

It's a point we've discussed on many occasions, but as weary as it may seem, it bears repeating. The airlines sell seats on the same
flight at two different prices: full price publicly, a discounted price secretly. People sitting next to each other have often paid widely varying prices depending on how and from whom they bought their tickets.

That ancient wisdom was again brought sharply to my attention as a result of a friend's experience this past week. She attempted to buy
trans-Atlantic tickets from New York to London at the height of the Olympics frenzy, for a departure in late July, return in early August,
and went directly to a carrier well known for its flights to London. They quoted her an awesome price of $1,700 per ticket, round-trip.

Aghast, she proceeded to open her laptop and went to Hipmunk.com, requesting seats for the very same dates to and from London. Hipmunk led her to Vayama, which
responded that they could provide her with seats for those dates on a "mystery carrier" for $1,200. She would learn its name when she
committed to buy. Relieved over this $500 saving, she immediately punched "buy." And lo and behold, she was given seats on the very
airline on the very same dates and flights -- a well-known London carrier -- that had earlier quoted her $1,700 for them. Obviously, the
carrier was selling its seats at full price to unsuspecting buyers who contacted them direct, while dumping them through an "aggregator" (and
not the biggest of them) for more sophisticated buyers.

Note how policies vary among various purveyors of travel. Recently, I wrote about how certain prominent hotels are holding back
their rooms from the various OTAs on dates when they know they can sell those rooms directly to the public without paying a commission to
the OTAs. But almost at the same time, a desperate airline was offering its seats to a airfare aggregator at a discounted price.

The lesson from all this? You need spend a few moments testing various sources of travel products when you buy a travel product. You
cannot afford to be impatient. You must spend the time. If a hotel search engine offers you a poor price, call the hotel directly. If an
airline offers a poor price, contact the airline search engines. Try them all -- and often you'll rejoice.