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Airline consolidators tourist information
Airline consolidators tourist information
Airline consolidators are brokers who buy seats in bulk from the airline, then resell them to travel agents, often those who specialize in discount international travel (known as "bucket shops") or sometimes directly to the public. Due to the rapid increase in recent years of tickets being sold online and the "e-ticket," in many locations, physical bucket shops have become less numerous and more expensive than those on the internet.
Often, but not always, purchasing from a consolidator (directly or indirectly) results in a lower fare than offered by the airline. This method should not be confused with the discount airlines such as Southwest Airlines in the USA, and RyanAir in Europe. Discount airlines are able to fill nearly every seat themselves. Only distant international destinations are sold on a consolidation basis. In the USA, this means Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, as well as the continental U.S. are excluded. In Asia, however, the distances do not have to be so great.
Not all countries allow consolidators to operate (especially in the Third World), in which case airline fares are strictly by the book with their published tariff rates. However, this applies only to residents of that country (and its visitors who fly to a secondary destination as a local traveler would). For example, residents of country X which allows consolidators, can fly cheaply (either one way or round trip) to country Y which does not allow consolidators. However, those in country Y must pay full price to fly to country X, or anywhere else for that matter. This can even have an effect on published fares, pushing them lower in countries with consolidators, and higher in those without.
The countries with the most airline consolidators, and the least expensive international airfares, are the United States, UK, Germany, Thailand, and Hong Kong. In addition, Canada also has consolidators, though its international fares tend to be higher (even when allowing for the Canadian dollar exchange rate) than those in the USA. Similarly, a few other countries in Europe also have them, but tend to be more expensive than the U.K. or Germany with the exception of flights from France to its former colonies.
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Airline consolidators Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.