I’ve worked in the travel industry for 4+ years, and heard this same question from customers a number of times. There are a number of reasons why prices on travel websites are different from airline websites:
Airlines’ top priority is keeping their flights full. Hence, they have to negotiate with these sites to offer better services and stay in business. It is mutual and they know that the most people who visit their website are the coach or economy crowd, who will always book through the website where they get the best rates. You might also have observed a difference in cost on two different discounted travel websites as one of them might have given a better business to that airline and hence, could negotiate for better rates with them.
Market segmentation?
The people who shop on budget travel websites are, by definition, very price senstitive. They will take the cheapest flight. So you can offer them a cheap price and make a sale (and a little bit of profit). If you know someone is much less price sensitive, and willing to pay more, they charge more.
The people with a lot of money and who aren’t willing to shop around and adjust their plans a lot are the most profitable to the airlines. Business class travllers are the main people like this. The company is paying for it, not them, so they don’t care as much, and the company has a lot of money (a transatlantic flight costs the company about a few days salary for that employee).
The main point of difference in prices is the set of services you are buying on sites.
First of all, are you sure that this is completely the same?
There are many options you didn’t say about. Air-travel is big business, and there is no way some companies will differ they prices without reason.
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