BNET Industries

BNET Travel

Industry news and insights by Brett Snyder and Barbara Hernandez

Frontier Begins Offering "Productized" Fares

By Brett Snyder | December 19th, 2008 @ 7:37 am

Frontier President and CEO Sean Menke’s roots are showing. Menke, who was previously with Air Canada, has brought that carrier’s fare structure down south to his current company Frontier. The airline announced yesterday that it would begin offering three levels of fares: Economy, Classic, and Classic Plus. I’ve been a big proponent of this type of “productized” faring for years, and I’m glad to see it’s slowly being adopted.

Instead of having me explain the structure, I’ll just show it directly from Frontier’s website:

Frontier AirFairs

My biggest problem with fees in general is that you have to pay for them individually as you go through your travel experience. This structure enables people to self-select what kind of ticket they want up front. This makes life much easier for the customer, and it gets them to consider an upsell very early on. It also has the benefit of clearly displaying what customers will get when they buy their ticket, so expectations are set appropriately up front.

Nice job, Frontier.

Tags: Structure, Web Site Development, Web Technology, Recruitment & Selection, Benefits, Internet, Human Resources, Workforce Management, Brett Snyder

In addition to writing BNET's travel industry blog, Brett Snyder also pens the award-winning consumer travel blog, Cranky Flier. You can follow him on Twitter under the name crankyflier.

 
Reply to Story

BNET TalkbackShare your ideas and expertise on this topic

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

     
  • 1

    Nicholas Barnard

    12/20/08 | Report as spam

    RE: Frontier Begins Offering

    Brett,
    How does this show up on GDS systems?

  •  
  • 2

    brett snyder

    12/21/08 | Report as spam

    RE: Frontier Begins Offering

    That's a good question. If Frontier has done this by using booking codes, then the GDS will be able to show it. Virgin America, for example, does this with Main Cabin Select. Certain booking codes are for one fare type and another for the other fare types. Of course, the online travel agents wouldn't have any of this displayed so you'd need to go to a real travel agent or to Frontier directly.

    The GDS and Airline Reservation Systems have been the big sticking points in the adoption of this type of strategy, and that's why Air Canada has opted to have ITA develop a new reservation system for them so they can handle it better internally. One of these days, the GDSs will actually catch up.

The following tags are supported in BNET comments:
<b></b> <i></i> <u></u> <pre></pre>

Leave a Reply

  1. You are currently a guest | Login?
advertisement
Go
advertisement
  • Click Here
  • Click Here
advertisement
AboutTravel Industry

BNET Travel provides daily industry news coverage and insights for managers and executives about all aspects of the travel and tourism industry. In addition to detailed company profiles, we bring you critical analysis on new alliances and partnerships, new products and carrier routes, mergers and acquisitions, labor and cost management, investments and deal flow, and a host of other important business issues.