This is yet another move at disintermediating the GDSs following the deregulation of the GDSs on July 1. If we follow Seth's logic of recouping costs, then the carriers *must* charge passengers who simply make reservations over the GDS. Whether the ticket is bought or not -- call it a "holding fee," and refund it if the ticket gets purchased. Earlier this week SABRE announced it would impose a service fee on agencies' service fees. (Yes - http://www.btnmag.com/businesstravelnews/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000616834 ) Further, SABRE announced it would seek revenue from content providers (in this case, hotels) for better positioning in their display screens -- a return to the "bias" of the 1980's, but this time imposed by a switch on a vendor, rather than a carrier on a competitor. It is the beginning of a new Wild West in the distribution channel. For deregulation stuff see also http://www.btnmag.com/businesstravelnews/headlines/frontpage_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000611702 http://www.acemakr.com/online/2004/07/gds_deregulatio.html http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3266/is_3_63/ai_112944506 Seth Heckard <seth+yahoo@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: On Tue, 2004-08-24 at 11:05, David M. Knies wrote: > Well, I just got the following eMail from our sales people at > Northwest/KLM. Get ready -- once one does it, they all do. > > Oh yeah, and keep reading -- they will even charge people who call in. Call me crazy, but this is a good thing. If you buy a ticket from Orbitz or a similar site, they charge you a $5 fee, right? Why shouldn't the airlines recoup some of their costs? If you look at what rock-bottom pricing has done to other markets (notably the telecom market... cell phones, etc.), this isn't at all surprising. Watch the remainder of the big six quietly announce this the rest of the week. Seth --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.