Articles tagged “ancillary revenue”

This is how competition should work. American, Delta, and United have been poaching customers from discount airlines with their no-frills basic economy fares. Frontier doesn't like that, so it has come up with a new passenger-friendly policy to try to sway potential passengers.

JetBlue took criticism for moving to raise bag fees first. But the airline's CEO, Robin Hayes, made clear that customers who plan in advance will keep getting to pay the old rate.

Airlines need to increase revenue. We get that. But can't they be smarter about how they assess fees?

Airline executives often say they don't know why consumers hate their industry so much. Bag fees are among the reasons.

Despite some well-publicized incidents involving drunk passengers, U.S. airlines aren’t about to fly dry. The revenue is just too big. But flight attendants say drunk passengers are the top source of harassment and want airline staff to keep them off planes.

In some ways, perhaps … but one big difference between hotels and airlines is that hotels want their consumers to actually like (maybe even love) them. While with airlines, that might be a different story as some recent events would demonstrate (we're looking at you, United).

Allegiant has been busy with other matters in recent years, but the airline should once again focus on selling vacation packages. The margins on hotel rooms, rental cars and attraction tickets are usually much higher than margins on airfares.

On short-haul flights, airlines have just about levied all the fees they can. But fees are just starting to creep in on long-haul flights. Expect that trend to continue in the next few years.

More hotels are realizing that charging people for Wi-Fi access isn't going to win them any brownie points. But beyond consumer ire, including angry TripAdvisor reviews, hoteliers should probably be more concerned about the Federal Trade Commission stepping in and clamping down on perceived "deceptive hotel fees."

When fuel was expensive, Spirit was one of the industry's top performers. But cheaper oil has not been helpful to the carrier, so now it must get smarter.