JetBlue Airways has broken another low-fares taboo by signing up with most of the big online travel agencies so that they can sell the airline's tickets.
The move follows the breaking in August 2006 of another low-fare rule as JetBlue began making its fares available through the Galileo and Sabre global distribution systems. The carrier is also forging an international marketing agreement with Irish carrier Aer Lingus.
The GDS move made sense if it was to attract higher-paying corporate business that has always relied on travel agencies. But the online agencies tend to sell the cheaper inventory, and JetBlue will make even less on these cheap seats if it sells through a third party.
JetBlue tickets will now be sold via three Travelport-owned sites: Orbitz, Orbitz for Business, and Cheap Tickets, as well as via Sabre subsidiary Travelocity and via Expedia and Priceline.
Priceline says it will offer JetBlue seats both on its regular "book-here" offering and its opaque so-called reverse-auction, "name-your-price" offering.
The move leaves Dallas-based Southwest Airlines as the only big low-fares carrier to shun the online agencies. But Forrester Research analyst Henry Harteveldt, who has seen the slowing of airline sales through their own websites, suggests that the online agencies can use JetBlue as much as it can use them.
In the past if the online agencies wanted to offer low-fare carrier tickets for sale, they would "screen-scrape" the content from the airline websites, a practice frowned on by the airlines themselves.
In the UK, easyJet has "politely" contacted online agencies it believes to be scraping its content and asked them to either stop or enter a formal arrangement with the carrier to allow it to take place, says Paul Simmons, head of brand marketing product and distribution at easyJet.
The carrier says it is prepared to discuss direct ways of connecting the online agencies to the airline's website under the same conditions as easyJet recently struck with the Amadeus and Travelport GDSs.
EasyJet will not say how much business it is losing to the online agencies. One potential loss of business is in ancillary services offered on the airline's website.
"Why should we allow an unmanaged, unregulated situation in the market?" asks Simmons. "We have built up a strong relationship with our customers and we want to own it rather than someone else do it on our behalf." EasyJet has given online agencies until May to stop scraping its site. If they do not, the airline "reserves the right" to take legal action against them, he says.
Source: Airline Business
