Here's an idea where an Expedia-challenger could offer a real benefit.

[brooksmoses]

In what I wouldn't be surprised to find is a response to companies like Expedia and Travelocity and such listing long lists of flights ordered by base price, thereby encouraging travelers to choose the cheapest one, airlines are charging for more and more incidentals. The latest indignity is that chinders reports that US Airways charged her for a glass of water. (Well, okay, a bottle. But that was as close as was available.)

(I am increasingly glad that I am using up all my US Airways frequent-flyer miles shortly, and will have no more reason to care if they go under. I was going to say "will have no more reason to preferentially fly on their airline", but that went away when they started a milage-sharing agreement with United so I didn't have to fly on their airline to try to get miles faster than they upped the amounts one needed to redeem to get a ticket. But that's a separate rant.)

In any case, the charges for these incidentals vary from airline to airline, and in the case of checked luggage can be pretty significant. Similarly, the charges for wireless internet service in hotels is a significant incidentals charge.

Thus, what I would really like is to have a set of checkboxes in my travel flight-finder or hotel-finder that lets me check boxes for incidentals like "dinner" or "drink" or "two checked bags" or "internet service", and have it then calculate the prices of the flights or hotel stays with all of those incidentals figured in. So that, if I want to pick the flight that's $15 cheaper, I know it will actually be $15 cheaper rather than $37 more expensive once I check my bags and buy a glass of water.

Comments

[tendyl.livejournal.com]

Have you considered writing to those ticket sales companies with this idea? It's a damned good one!