Legion of Angels News Archive

Like Unicorns (or in these trying times, a bank you can trust) consolidator fares are elusive, precious items that can offer a traveler great savings. Airfarewatchdog.com has taken the time to track down the facts about these airline special offers. In the first installment, we learned they were created to ensure flights sold out, but in an era of airline consolidations and bankruptcies, these deals are getting fewer and far-between.

What’s Your Best Chance of Finding the Fares?

According to both Bob Harrell of New York airline consultancy Harrell Associates and Greg Rholl, Vice President of Pricing and Distribution for Minnesota consolidator Centrav, the best times to find consolidator fares are when 1) you’re traveling coach internationally, 2) you’re traveling last-minute, or 3) both.

Because consolidators don’t actually buy the seats, they’re usually granted their window of opportunity early in the booking process (to fill up a limited number of seats to hedge the airline’s bet on passengers) or late (to make up for the passengers the airline estimated would book, but didn’t). Your travel agent can even find consolidator business class seats last minute, for up to a 50% discount.

What Do Consolidator Fares “Act” Like?

You may think that because you’re getting a bargain basement price, your consolidator ticket will be nonrefundable, non-changeable, won’t allow you to make advance seat assignments, won’t let you earn miles - a heavily restricted “use it or lose it” ticket. That’s usually not the case (and yes, you’ll almost always earn your miles), but you DO need to ask your travel agent for up-front restriction information. Consolidator fares generally act like those discounted economy class tickets of the lower echelons, and carry similar restrictions. That’s why some travelers are convinced they’ve bought consolidator fares on airline websites - but they haven’t. American Airlines spokesman Ned Raynolds confirmed that the airlines aren’t allowed to sell unpublished fares themselves.

The problem with bulk fares often doesn’t lie with the restrictions themselves, but the capacity that the consolidator has been granted by the airline. For example, say you bought a consolidator ticket as a “T” class (generally one of the lowest of the low airfare classes). If you bought it and the airline then closes out the consolidator’s “bucket,” you won’t be able to change it, even if the airline still has “T” class tickets of its own to sell. IF the consolidator has similarly restricted tickets like “L” or “K” class, you might be able to swap them, through your agent, but only if the consolidator’s window is still open.

Similarly, say you bought a discounted “Q” class ticket directly from the airline. If you wanted to change it and that particular class was sold out, you could ask the airline to let you pay the difference and a penalty to upgrade to a full-fare, unrestricted “Y” class ticket. You won’t be able to do that with a consolidator fare. The other restriction you’ll find across the board: You’ll never be able to upgrade your ticket using miles. The lesson: You’d better be sure that your consolidator ticket is the one you want, because you’re most likely stuck with it.

What About Consolidators That Sell on the Web?

Not a good idea. Consolidators simply aren’t built for customer service. As we mentioned before, through years of relationship-building, your travel agent has a much better grasp of which consolidators are good, and which ones are shady, than you do. Consolidators themselves can’t really offer you any guarantees on your fare. Big consolidators have a lot of sway with the airlines because of the volume they do, so they can often help (but the reputable ones will only deal with your travel agent). If something goes wrong with a consolidator ticket you’ve bought through a trusted agency, the agency should absorb your loss.

According to Simon Bramley, head of pricing for Travelocity, the Travelocity Guarantee to “make things right” would function this way, buffering you from a loss if something should happen to one of the consolidator fares it offers through its site (you’ll usually spot these marked as “exclusives,” and all restrictions are listed before you purchase). And as always, you’ll want to ensure every purchase by using a credit, not a debit card, so you can take it up with the credit card company if the deal goes south.

Comparison Shopping

The inevitable truth is that you’ll want to shop around. Airlines, in an effort to drive customers to their own sites, now offer low fare guarantees. That means that even if you find an “exclusive” consolidator fare online, the airline will more than likely match or beat it. Domestic consolidator fares have been all but completely squeezed out by the Internet, and because airlines are decreasing capacity (mostly domestically), you’ll find even fewer for US-only flights. Rholl notes that airlines now release prices to consolidators that are exactly the same as published fares. Of course, you always have the option of searching the consolidators that sell online, and then mitigating your risk by asking your travel agent to find the fare for you. Like all fares worth finding, locating them will take a search.

Source — Yahoo!

Unless the International Olympic Committee acts fast and makes heaving overweight carry-on bags into overhead airplane bins an official Olympic sport, my chances of visiting Beijing this summer are nil.

But if committee members do finally come to their senses, I’m ready to go. I’ve been practicing my technique on plane trips with multiple connections. And I’ve been prepping for free time in Beijing by gathering advice on how to be a well-mannered traveler in China.

Here’s what I found out:

A new meaning for spit and polish
With 50,000 visitors expected to arrive in Beijing for the 2008 Summer Games in just a few weeks, it’s no surprise that government officials are cleaning up the city and ordering citizens to be on their best behavior. By now, folks should know what that means. After all, as NBC news correspondent Mark Mullen noted in his World Blog, this past February the People’s Republic introduced a “public civility campaign,” complete with slogans and banners, aimed at getting citizens to stop spitting so much, to stop cutting in line and to stop doing other things that Mullen writes, “would not be good manners to describe.”

Like what?
Most Olympic visitors will probably not want to know. Or need to. “Beijing is an international tourist destination with modern hotels, restaurants, bars/clubs and transportation, so it’s not as scary a destination as many may make it out to be,” says John Campbell, a writer and music promoter who has lived in China for eight years. “In the Olympic areas, chances are that many visitors may not actually run into parts of the city untouched by the short-term cleanup” anyway.

That said, Campbell advises visitors to come prepared for “smelly and dirty bathrooms, restaurants that aren’t spic and span, locals who may stare at foreigners, point at foreigners, and in some cases, request to touch a curly head of hair or a beard and don’t see anything wrong with doing so; and fellow diners who talk loudly, drink loudly, slurp their soup and chew with their mouths open …”

Frequent business traveler Vickie Nauman agrees. “Remember that China has been closed off from the rest of the world, so many common practices and customs make sense in China, but they may not make sense to you — at all.”

Her advice: “Have a sense of humor about these differences,” especially when it comes to spitting and toilets. “Ladies may need to squat because toilets are often in the ground. And those toilets may smell unlike anything you’ve experienced before. Bring small packs of tissues, because there’s rarely toilet paper in the bathrooms.”

When it comes to spitting, says Nauman, “People have loud productive coughs and subsequent spitting. It is common to see men, women and even kids hocking one in the streets. Try to ignore it or it will aggravate you at every step.”

Vicky Collins, a freelance television producer on assignment in Beijing for the Olympics, says, “It is true that there’s a lot of spitting going on. Today I applauded a man on the street who was practicing some martial arts with a type of spear. He looked extremely pleased with my praise, gave me thumbs up then hawked a loogie.”

Stay safe: Watch out for topics and taxis
Bonnie Girard has lived in China for at least 21 years and is the President of China Channel Limited. She advises visitors to nix certain topics of conversation. “You risk putting your Chinese colleagues, friends, hosts or acquaintances into a sticky — if not risky — position if you try to force conversations about controversial political or religious issues. Don’t jeopardize someone else’s freedom in the exercise of one’s own.”

Girard also encourages travelers to avoid sticky situations on the road: “China has one of the worst records in the world for fatalities per number of vehicles on the road. Your life is worth more than the embarrassment or the ‘face’ of a bad driver if you happen to be in a car with one. So if you are in a car with a bad driver, say that you have a heart problem or are sick and you need them to slow down and drive sanely. If language is an issue, use sign language. Ham it up.”

Bruce McIndoe, President of iJET Intelligent Risk Systems, says things aren’t any safer or easier for pedestrians. “Getting across the street is like the game ‘Frogger.’ When you go across the street, you’re advancing lane by lane and trying to zigzag your way safely through traffic.” Accidents are so common that McIndoe urges travelers to bring along their own first aid kit and to check if their medical insurance offers coverage while in China. If it doesn’t, he suggests buying a medical insurance policy for travelers. “People need to be psychologically prepared,” says MCindoe. “This is a rough and tumble, grimy environment. It’s not like London or Washington, D.C. Beijing is congested, hot, and dirty. You have to adapt to that and live with that — and come prepared.”

Eat, slurp, and be messy
With more than 30,000 restaurants in the metropolitan Beijing area, visitors will find plenty of places to eat. But Erik Wolf of the International Culinary Tourism Association knows some Western visitors may be alarmed by sanitary conditions they encounter. “Restaurants in Western-style hotels won’t be a problem, but in more authentic restaurants you might see dirty floors and tables.”

And once at the table, says Wolf, don’t be surprised to see and hear people slurping their soup. “The Chinese people kind of lay their heads in the soup bowl. They bring the soup bowl up to their face and bring their heads to the soup bowl. It looked strange to me before someone explained to me what was going on, but it’s to keep soup from splashing or splattering on their shirt.”

Wolf also says visitors should be ready to see bits of food being spit out at the table. “If I had a piece of meat in my mouth that was too grisly or a piece of vegetable that was too tough to eat, I might cover my mouth and remove it. In China, it gets spit right out and goes right on the table.”

And, Wolfe points out, “In China, they don’t waste food. So every part of an animal gets used. It’s a great way to do it, but that means people may end up eating some surprising things.”

Vicky Collins can attest to that. “In restaurants, waiters and waitresses arrive immediately and hover over you until you order. This can be disconcerting to westerners trying to slog their way through a menu they can’t read that’s full of unfamiliar foods. My friend and I ended up ordering donkey the other day — not our intention at all.”

Faced with a situation like that, Wolf says, “You just need to go with an open mind, and realize people eat differently and do things differently. If you think something looks yucky, just don’t eat it.”

Just go with the flow
Exactly, says Jon Campbell of YGTwo Productions. While bathrooms and restaurants may seem dirty and the lines in Beijing may “resemble a swarm of bees rather than a march of ants, this is not to say that Beijing is a rude disgusting mess of humanity.” It’s just different. “And to navigate through this difference requires taking a deep breath, and remembering that.”

Well, maybe not so different. Collins reports that at a live opera performance in Beijing she heard someone talking on their cell phone. As we all know, that happens here in America all the time.

Do you have a question about what is proper etiquette when on the road? Do you have a story about a particularly obnoxious traveler?

Source — MSNBC