I’ve been waiting for this for months since it happended in the US and last night I saw a breaking news notice with announcements by Zuji and Expedia Australia that they are scrapping all airline booking fees, effective immediately.

Travellers this means you will no longer have to pay the sometimes crazy extra fees to book your air tickest on Zuji or Expedia.

I imagine this move will be heavily supported by advertising campaigns to let consumers know about these changes and to try and take bookings from the far and away current market leader Webjet.

Previously all these sites charged a good wack of fees and I can’t see why the travelling public would put up with it when you can book directly for the same price without the fee?

Webjet is now out on its own, currently charging handsome (read exorbitant) fees up to $49.90 per airline booking ($29.90 international booking fee plus a very impressive sounding “price guarantee” of $19.95 that really is a gouge that I can’t believe travellers have swallowed for so long. This price guarantee fee applies to all bookings (air, car, hotel etc) provided the transaction is completed within 30 minutes but seriously if you’re going to book it you’re going to book it and why would you allow such a blatant hand in your back pocket is beyond me.

Domestic airfares also attract similar fees with $29.90 being charged - $19.95 processing, $9.95 price guarantee but I really can’t understand why anyone would complete a domestic booking on Webjet (or Zuji, Expedia when the fees were there) instead of the airlines site directly.

As this is a traveller blog, I’ll leave the detailed business comments to the Industry bloggers but I have heard it said that something like 95% of Webjet’s revenue comes from these types of fees which must be quite scary for Webjet but I imagine this move is not unexpected from similar actions a few months ago in the US when fees were dropped by parents Travelovity and Expedia.

It could be interesting times ahead for

• travellers, as Zuji and Expedia both try and get market share with advertising and deals and
• Webjet as it tries to keep it’s market share and maintain it’s fee’s. If the 95% number is accurate this one dimensional business model based on the fee’s with very little in the way of revenue from hotels or other types of travel product can’t be easily surrendered.

It must be remembered that the airlines started all this when they dropped commissions to nothing, then they began aggressively promoted booking direct and so agents had little option to rely on fee’s to sell the product and make a Dollar.

Have you ever booked an airfare on a site with large fee’s and felt gouged?

Pic by Pirate Alice on Flickr