Tourism: Saturday Stay-Over Requirement Dropped For Some Chicago Flights
Cutting out a longtime stay requirement on certain Chicago airline routes isn’t expected to affect the travel budgets of many companies in San Diego.
The closest city is Los Angeles, and there are already many routes between San Diego and Chicago, said Gil Saidy, who owns local travel agency Aer Travel.
A couple weeks ago, several major carriers began dropping a longtime pricing policy in which customers could pay less if they stayed over a Saturday night.
The policy had been targeted at the airlines’ corporate market, guessing business travelers would pay more to not have to remain over the weekend.
With the slower economy hurting travel, and smaller discount airlines possibly taking away market share, however, the airlines started to loosen the Saturday stay rule.
United Airlines, based in Chicago, was the first to do it, followed by American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Northwest Airlines and Continental Airlines.
So far, the pricing policy has been lifted on only a couple of routes to and from Chicago.
Very few of his clients are being affected, Saidy said.
It could be the airlines are doing it to compete with lower-cost carriers and possibly drive them out of business, Saidy said.
“It’s not just this, ‘Well, we’re trying to stimulate our business travel,'” he said. “Well, sort of, but if you’re really trying to stimulate your business travel, why are you only picking very few routes on this, and why are you picking routes that other carriers, smaller carriers are on.”
Status Quo
Tim Smith, the president and owner of San Diego Travel Group, doesn’t foresee the Saturday stay requirement lifted on additional routes or any coming out of San Diego.
When it comes to corporate travel, airlines’ pricing strategy hasn’t really changed much over the years, according to Smith.
“The business traveler is the bread and butter to the airlines,” he said. “There is a need for business travelers to travel, and they have historically always paid the highest price with the greatest yield per airline mile, and that’s not going to change.”
The slowdown in corporate travel is undeniable , and as companies re-evaluate policies and look at travel more critically than in the past, the airlines need to find a way to stimulate that travel, he said.
Still, making exceptions to the Saturday requirement is unlikely to spark too much of an increase in corporate travel, Smith said. Only a firmer economy could do that, he said.
“Corporate travelers aren’t going to suddenly say, OK, there are better deals out there, let’s go back to full steam,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s going to happen.”
More than anything, airlines’ waiving the requirement is going to produce additional publicity for the airlines, Smith said.
“Certainly, it will create interest and it will create questions,” he said. “I think people will check with their travel agency or their airlines or their Web.”
Yield Management
The numbers might tell a different story, he said. He expects the airlines will control the availability of the fares, and there will be a limited number of seats available without a Saturday stay.
“The airlines are masters of yield management,” Smith noted. “There’s absolutely nobody better at this game than the airlines, in maximizing the yield per airplane.”
The fares might also be available on flights that wouldn’t appeal to the business traveler, he said. They could be scheduled outside of the workday, making them less convenient.
“I could be mistaken,” he said, “but I think it would be highly unusual and most certainly out of character for them to change a long-standing policy of keeping the discount seat away from the business traveler. Time will tell.”
