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Of course, the
airline would prefer to sell you your seat directly, because they will
get to keep all of the markup for themselves, thereby increasing their
profit margins. But the system has been set up in this way to assure
the airline that they will be able to fill all of their seats.
Let's face it, empty
seats generate zero revenue. The airlines figure that they would
rather discount some seats than to fly half full. When the airlines
sell seats to consolidators; they often do so for as much as 70% of
off the regular published airfare prices! Since the discounts are so
deep, there are a lot of consolidators willing to jump in and sell
seats for the airlines. Imagine that.
This means that the
person in seat 2B might have actually paid twice as much for his
ticket as did the person in seat 2C! This is because the person in
seat 2C was willing to shop around for a better price, whereas the
person in seat 2B just called the airline and bought his ticket at the
regular rate.
It actually happens
everyday where a shopper will find a ticket for half of what they
would expect to pay for the ticket, but by the time they get to the
checkout screen, the ticket has already been sold. In some cases, the
shopper had the chance to buy directly from the consolidator instead
of from the reseller/agent who is trying to beat them to the punch.
This is also the
reason that if you shop for an airline ticket online, you might find
the same ticket at five different sites at five different prices.
Let*s face it, all of the consolidators have their own defined markup
on the tickets they sell, and each of the resellers/agents also have
their own markup on your ticket. Everyone needs to make a profit,
right?
But, some companies charge a higher
markup, while others charge a lower markup. Whereas the big
consolidators might charge a $150 or $200 markup on the tickets they
sell, there are other consolidators that charge only a $50 markup on a
resold ticket.
Before you actually buy your ticket, we
would strongly suggest for you to shop around and try to see all of
the sites that resell airfare, be it consolidators or resellers, and
see for yourself who has the best prices.
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