Bezerker Crazy !

From all accounts, Kayak and SideStep are growing huge over in Europe – and FMV could guess it was just a matter of time until people starting eyeing the great prize of Asia. Two names that we keep hearing about are Bezurk.com and Qunar. While Qunar has focused more on the Chinese market, Bezurk seems to encompass more of Asia and are ramping up their activities:

1) They signed a marketing alliance with Carlson Hotels Worldwide. The deal will result in real-time rates and availability for all Carlson Hotels properties worldwide to their Asia Pacific-based audience.

2) They announced a marketing partnership with Qatar Airways, who will promote its fares on Bezurk.com’s flights search engine and deals channel. Bezurk will also access and display real-time Qatar Airways fares and availability throughout its network of Bezurk and partner branded websites.

This is definitely the stuff that FMV SHOULD be interested in - but we just can’t do much more than muster a nice golf clap. China and India have been hyped as the next new online travel market for years – but FMV sees this as a red herring / black hole. It SOUNDS great, but there are two huge stumbling blocks to success in this area:

Of immediate concern to meta-searchers is the complete decentralization of local private fares throughout Asia. While SITA does offer an automated fare distribution product, there are too may fares that are simply faxed to travel agents in their local market. We are told that certain fares may in fact be set by a local airline manager. These fares will often be cheaper than the airlines' own web fares and will really hurt the relevancy of Meta’s.

There is also the simple fact that too many Asians just don’t use credit cards over the Internet, and in China receipts are issued on government paper stock. Here's a conversation FMV had with a Chinese travel agent describing how they sell tickets online:

“A person buys a ticket on the website - we then send a bicycle courier over to their flat to collect the cash and give them the ticket.”

Seriously?!! How do you scale that?? Don't get us wrong, we really really hope these guys turn out to be wildly sucessful - but it's not going to be an overnight sensation. It's going to be a long slog, and it's going to require some macro market changes. The hope would be that after the market becomes more accepting, the first movers stand tall. The risk of course is that, "pioneers get the arrows, settlers get the land".

New AA.com (Old Alaska and Air Canada)

AA.com looks like they re-designed their website with some nifty new features – including a "Price and Schedule Search" functionality shown here. The new display is solid and a distinct improvement.

FMV also thinks it adds flavors from two other airlines.

The first one is the Alaska Airlines search results layout – where you can see different fare levels side by side. Not that big of a deal since it’s a fairly intuitive layout, but nice none-the less. We guess Alaska shouldn't be that upset – "Sincerest form of flattery" and all that….

But the most interesting thing about this system in FMV’s eyes is that American appears to be taking a page out of Air Canada’s playbook of offering different amenities for different classes.

For instance, the example shown, the difference between the “Economy Saver” and the “Economy Flexible” is that you can use 500-mile upgrades with the Flexible fares. In addition, they have introduced a “Instant Upgrade” fare that is supposed to be "a business- or first-class seat sold at the same price as a coach fare. Sometimes those tickets are cheaper than the most expensive coach seat." However, buyers of this fare will also get Priority Boarding, Priority Check-In, Lounge Access for International Flights, and even bonus miles.

In many of the conferences FMV have attended, several airlines have been saying they wanted to mirror Air Canada's ability to tie more benefits to higher fare classes. True, AA's fare names are much more uptight than Air Canada's “Tango” and “Latitude” fares - but it's clear they are making progress along these lines.

Standby Confirmed

We don't fly on US Airways very much, so this news fell under the radar a bit. We caught it in the WSJ today. Late last month, US announced that they will no longer charge Dividend Miles preferred members for same-day confirmed standby.


First of all, we love confirmed standby. Anytime you can get your business done and get to the airport early is a win -- and to top that off with a guarantee that you'll actually out of the airport early is a huge value to the business traveller.


That said, we think $25 is a very reasonable charge for this guarantee. Your credit card should crawl out of your wallet on it's own to pay this at the kiosk. Unless...you have elite status, you know the earlier flight's not packed, and you know you're an elite that will clear standby and get a decent seat for free anyways.


Hence, the beauty of this policy revision. It's a nice tip of the hat to loyal passengers, for those times when the guaranteed seat really means a lot (i.e. during a time of heavy loads), but US probably isn't giving much away in revenue. These passengers knew it was many times unnecessary.