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What's New
Once again ETC's average ticket price is lower than the industry average. Executive Travel has always been able to offer average ticket prices lower than the industry average. Here's the comparison for 2009:
The State Department is advising Americans to defer any unnecessary travel to several states in Mexico, including Tamaulipas, Michoacan and parts of Chihuahua and Durango. The warning does not include Sonora, although it references the city of Nogales as the site of frequent shootouts. The updated travel warning also mentions the Mexican highways along the border with the U.S. To read the complete travel alert click here.
American Airlines, British Airways, Iberia Airlines, Finnair and Royal Jordanian have received final approval for antitrust immunity from the U.S. Department of Transportation and regulatory approval from the European Union. These regulatory approvals allow American, British Air and Iberia to operate between North America and Europe as a joint business.
Alliances have existed for more than a decade as airlines have sought to market themselves jointly. But the companies have found that splicing together computer systems and competitive instincts has been difficult and is still evolving. As a result, perks and policies vary among each of the three big alliances-Star, oneworld and SkyTeam. For example, using mileage points for a free ticket or to upgrade from a coach ticket to business class is generally easier if you're flying one of the member airlines in Star Alliance than in oneworld or SkyTeam. Meanwhile, access to fancy lounges is often better for elite-level frequent fliers at oneworld. And the simple act of earning miles for flights isn't the same across all alliances, or even among airlines within the same alliance. Here's a summary of the three alliances:
Effective July 13, the U.S. State Department will impose new fees for many of its passport-related products and services as listed in the table below. Travelers needing extra visa pages will pay $82. Previously, this service has been offered free.
The complete rules and fee chart can be found on the Passport page of the State Department's website.
Alitalia, Italy's leading airline, today joined the Air France-KLM Group and Delta Air Lines as a member of the trans-Atlantic joint venture. Launched in April 2009, the multi-party agreement created a single, coordinated network for customers flying across the Atlantic, allowing the member airlines to share revenues and costs on their trans-Atlantic routes. Rome joins Amsterdam, Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis, New York-JFK and Paris-CDG as the core hubs of the joint venture, with additional trans-Atlantic service from Cincinnati, Milan Malpensa, Memphis and Salt Lake City. Wherever traffic rights permit, the airlines offer customers codeshare service between the United States and the European Union, and in many cases beyond, creating one network for seamless airline-to-airline connections between points in North America and the European Union.
Alaska will start non-stop service to St. Louis on September 27, 2010 with one flight daily. Passengers can earn Double Mileage Plan Miles for their flights through November 17th, 2010.
According to the Associated Press, the Defense Department spent an estimated $100 million for airline tickets that were not used over a six-year period and failed to seek refunds even though the tickets were reimbursable. One of the many services we offer is unused ticket tracking. We track your unused tickets and apply them to future travel or seek refunds for those tickets that are refundable. We can even transfer tickets to other travelers when the airline rules allow.
A new international benchmarking study conducted by Topaz International, a world leader in airfare auditing, showed that Travelport e-Pricing consistently finds the lowest available airfares worldwide. Topaz tracked the performance and itinerary pricing results of four of the most prominent low-fare shopping tools in the travel industry. Results revealed that e-Pricing not only finds lowest fares more often than other products, nearly 60 percent of the time overall, but also generates an average saving of $68.13 per ticket! Travelport e-Pricing is used by Executive Travel's agents as well as our online booking tool Traversa. Conducted in December 2008, the study tapped the top 500 domestic and international city pairs across Asia Pacific, EMEA, North America and Latin America. This scope represents the largest range of itineraries studied by Topaz over the past year to produce GDS low-fare search benchmarking data. The study showed that Travelport e-Pricing found the lowest fare two to four times more often than other competitive shopping products.
Two travel-industry studies show that deep cuts in travel can harm a company's bottom line. Oxford Economics, in a study released Tuesday, found that each dollar spent on travel by a U.S. company can generate an average profit of $3.80. Meanwhile, a study from IHS Global Insight estimates that U.S. companies could miss out on $193 billion in profit for 2009 because they cut too deeply into business travel. "We understand there's an economic downturn," says Christopher Pike of IHS. "It doesn't mean cutting business travel by 30% when an industry's sales are down by 5%. That's where we're saying you're probably going too far." USA TODAY (09/16) |
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