Airfare price tracking, also known as air price assurance, re-shopping, or fare auditing is employed by corporations to mitigate the risk of overpaying for business travels for their employees. Companies can spend significant amounts of money moving their employees globally to engage with clients as consultants, sell and close deals, manage customer relationships, and establish an on-site presence. Even during uncertain times, the necessity for business-critical travel persists, underscoring the need for an effective flight price tracker.
Deloitte, for instance, tops the Business Travel News Top 100, spending north of $500 million in the US solely on air travel. Utilizing a flight ticket tracker mitigates the risk of purchasing flights during pricing spikes and ensures a fair market price is paid.
Why Is Airfare Price Tracking Important?
Airfare tracking is essential for both Travel Managers and finance teams. It allows them to access complete visibility into any possible price drop (either during the void window or after it). Airfare price assurance providers such as Oversee will catch the fall and work with your TMC to secure those savings. Before the pandemic, airfares fluctuated around 70 times between publication and departure date. With airline revenue management systems pushed to their limits, this figure can be over 100. Over the past few months, data from Oversee’s airfare tracking solution has revealed significantly higher price volatility, between 10 and 30 percent compared to expected.
How Does Airfare Price Tracking Work?
Most trackers integrate with leading Global Distribution Systems (GDS), accessing all Passenger Name Records (PNRs) booked by a company’s travelers. Oversee’s algorithm continuously monitors the GDS, detecting price drops and automating rebooking instructions to TMCs.
This process ensures airfare price assurance while minimizing resource utilization, often with potential for automation.
Does Airfare Price Tracking Only Work On Flexible Fares?
No. As multiple fare rules govern cancellation costs, there are opportunities for travel savings even with the most restrictive fare rules. There are also considerable travel savings to be made by strategically switching travelers from flexible fares to less flexible fares a few days before departure.
Does Airfare Price Tracking Disrupt The Traveler?
In cases where a new PNR is generated for a new ticket, the traveler is alerted to this, and the OBT is updated accordingly. Oversee has not yet seen this disrupt the millions of PNRs we’ve scanned. Additionally, there are ways to exclude certain groups of travelers, such as VIPs or C-Suite executives for that added peace of mind. Our policy is ‘Same Flight, Same Cabin, Same Experience’ and, in most cases, the same seat for your travelers.
What Is The Best Airfare Price Tracker?
The best flight ticket tracker depends on the level of independence you’re looking for and the global reach of your program. To avoid the ‘fox in the hen-house,’ it’s always best to seek a TMC and GDS agnostic provider so that Travel Managers are confident that re-shopping success and data insights are independently provided and without bias. Alternate TMC price assurance solutions are typically restricted to specific geographical regions or function only within the void window; this can be useful if your organization wants a basic answer but may not maximize airfare price assurance.
Be mindful that these solutions do not provide for pan-program insights or multiple TMCs, so you may not be able to roll this out globally.
GDS-level tools exist, although they are restricted by definition to the GDS that provides them and, like the TMC solutions, they are very limited in the timing and geography of the price tracking.
Typically Oversee sees an increase of around 70% in savings when using an independent air price assurance solution that tracks prices until departure and on a global level. With Oversee, RELX found themselves saving 4.6% on annual air spend, which led to enhanced travel analytics with additional layers of reporting to benchmark negotiated fares against publicly available ones.
Using Oversee’s real-time data can better prepare Travel Managers when negotiating airline contracts and even highlight sub-standard agreements easily.
