“I used to like them, always fly with them,” he said, sputtering over the ribs which by the way are juicy and tender if a trifle sweet for my taste. “But now they are making it so complicated to book.”
“In what way?” I asked, always happy to listen to customer views about travel companies.
“There are so many add-ons. You click this and then it asks you if you want this or that, and it goes on and you keep adding and adding and by the time you’re over, you end up paying more than you wanted to,” he said.
“It’s their way of making money from ancillaries,” I said in my industry-guru voice. “Thirty percent of their revenues come from it.”
“Ancillaries. Anchovies. I don’t care. It’s irritating for the customer. I feel like I am being had and it’s complicated to book,” he replied.
“In the end,” he continued, “I gave up. I then tried Jetstar – they also have extras but it’s easier. They have something called ‘see all inclusions’.”
Finally though, he ended up flying with Singapore Airlines to Tokyo – because he said by the time he added up everything, it came up to more or less the same price.
With this conversation in mind, I asked David Hall, Jetstar Australia CEO, at a press conference what he thought of ancillaries and if this trend by airlines to unbundle might create a backlash among travel-savvier customers.
I believe he said something like “we believe in offering our customers choice” and that the airline would continue to pursue ancillaries as a revenue stream.
Well, we consumers do love choice, don’t we and so we are getting what we wished for.
(By the way, the nasi lemak with ikan billis (local anchovies) on AirAsia is pretty good and my guess is the airline sells a lot of those meals which you have to pre-order if you want to have it – it’s usually sold out, which I reckon is yet another tactic by the airline to get you to pay upfront.)
Thing is, airlines have finally found a way to make money (from selling you everything on top of an air ticket) and they ain’t going to give that up anytime soon, especially with rising fuel costs and now the Europeans wanting to charge emissions taxes for flying over their air space and the Chinese refusing to pay. You can see the airlines have quite a lot on their plate than to worry about small anchovy stuff like ancillaries.
Ironically, the very airlines that succeeded because they knew how to buck the system – AirAsia being prime example – often end up being, as they expand, like the airlines they used to knock.
Guess it’s a bit like growing up – as kids, we railed at our parents and as we grow up, we realize we become our parents.
And this year, we have new kids coming out to play – Scotty, Peachy and Smiley, for starters. Wonder what the kids who are all grown-up now and parents are going to do?
