| Understanding Webfares Accent Travel Home |
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You say, "I like to book my company's business travel using webfares." Fine, but don't book another webfare ticket until you read at least the next two paragraphs. You like using webfares for business travel. Excellent. We do, too. In fact, we have a webfare search tool that immediately checks the current pricing of all the most prominent sites, including Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia. It systematically visits each site and searches for the best of all of their fares, with no preference to any one site, then makes those fares available to our travelers. That saves a lot of employee time checking them all individually. HOWEVER, do you understand the risks that come with purchasing air travel this way? So-called "webfares" are subject to their own set of rules. They are very restrictive, offer virtually no recourse in case of change or problems, and if you don't understand them, you're probably going to get burned. The thing to do is be prepared by understanding the significant risks, rules, and restrictions. Then, use a multiple search site search engine in order to waste as little of your employee's business day as possible. But keep in mind, the Association of Corporate Travel Executives concluded, "Our research has shown that the best fare is on the web 10% of the time, in the GDS (Global Distribution System) 60% of the time and the negotiated fare 30% of the time." So far, the web wins less than 10% of the time. From TOPAZ International Experts in business travel trends and statistics: |