hillrider

I've recently found out that CX hides its business class fares (see http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/catha...fare-sale.html) and have been going to its website to get pricing.

I looked at CX's website for Italy (http://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/it_IT.html) for a MIL-SIN roundtrip and it quoted me EUR 3.613,14 (much less than the EUR 9.114 available from my travel agent). However, QR quoted me EUR 1.783 (both through my travel agent and its website) and so I purchased it: CX is not worth a 103% premium over QR).

Imagine my surprise when, for some reason, I had the impulse later on to check an Italian OTA, https://viaggi.americanexpress.it/, and found that the CX flights were available there for EUR 1.841,43 -- EUR 58 more than QR, which I would have paid no problem! I went back to search the Italian CX site and CX is still quoting me EUR 3.613,14.

What on earth is going on? It's highly frustrating -- it's as if CX doesn't want people's money (or at least mine). Since it appears that the CX website cannot be trusted, any advice? I now know in Italy to look at American Express Travel, how about in other countries? Any reliable global search site that will have CX's real business class prices?

1010101

I wish I knew the answer as I have had great difficulty with the CX website and its hiding of fares in recent months. Enough to make me look at other airlines in some cases.

Perhaps ITA Matrix and selecting different points of sale is a (long winded) solution?

hillrider

CX hides the fares from ITA Matrix/Google Flights. They are always my starting points when shopping, but had learned to also look at CX's website.

Now I am totally frustrated and muffled. I'll be fine with QR, but angry that the choice of CX was removed from me, by none other than CX itself.

Wasabi Tofu

Fortunately, for ex-JPN.
Conveniet tables are on the CX web site.

For example, to N.A.
http://www.cathaypacific.co.jp/fares...n0601/nam.html

Unfortunately, I can not find a summary page in English site.
There is a Japanese page which has all links to all fares to all destinations.

http://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/ja_J...rom-japan.html

However, you can clik links and get some info, because month/day/fare class/fare can be recognized.

1010101

Google Translate also does a fairly good job on those pages ^

Tokyo to LHR - ~$17,000HKD

hillrider

After reading about the page on JP fares, I went to see if I could find one for IT. None is available, but buried deeply is this one, http://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/it_I...-business.html showing fares not too dissimilar from those I found on American Express Travel.

But then it gets weirder: Singapore is not a city that you can book, however the (ridiculously limited) rules say that these fares are available for the following destinations: "Australia, Cambogia, Cina, Fiji, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Giappone, Corea del Sud, Malesia, Myanmar, Nuova Zelanda, Filippine, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailandia, Vietnam."

What a mess: the website tells you that a competitive fare is available to Singapore, but then doesn't allow you to book it and when you click on "book" on the home page it gives you an uncompetitive fare. Must be one of the lowest points in the annals of airline IT.

SeeBuyFly

Many airlines and hotels provide different prices on different sites. Maybe the idea is to limit how many they sell at the lowest price.

With some airlines, the airline's own web site will have low prices not available elsewhere. I have found really low ex-India prices on CX and AI web sites that were not available from other sources. In other cases (e.g. AA), the airline's web site will have higher prices, with lower prices elsewhere. It's impossible to know what the airline's revenue maximization algorithm is. Just because it was cheaper in one case at one point in time does not mean it will be cheaper in general.

Sometimes (but not always) Kayak ferrets out the lowest price. The fact that airline prices are not transparent is the reason Kayak exists.

hillrider

Most of the hotels and airlines are giving low price guarantees and are dying to drive as much traffic as possible to their own sites in order to cut the distribution costs. Their own website is in absolute the cheapest way for them to sell a ticket.

AA has a best fare guarantee and is continuously pushing people to buy from AA.com. If you see a higher price there, it's an error and they will pay you the difference plus an additional $50 if you bring it to their attention (see https://www.aa.com/i18n/reservations...itle=guarantee)

That's why low price guarantees work in steering customers to the cheapest distribution channel. But I guess I learned that CX doesn't do this, as I couldn't find such a guarantee on their website. Weird.

I forgot about that dinosaur! It too is broken: in the summary it shows a low price (in USD) for CX, lists CX as the only place to buy it from, and when I click on the link it goes to the CX website who then quotes me ... a much higher EUR 3119!! I checked American Express Travel and it's still EUR 1841 from them.

Frustrating.

jagmeets

Hillrider- you're not going to like this.

I can actually beat your price, and on the CX website at that- EUR 1824.90 vs the 1846.90 on Amex Viaggi, with the same flights (234+691 outbound dep on 11 May, 636+233 return, dep on 18 May).

The key - search on the CX website, but do not select flexible dates. Something that I got conditioned to, while booking exCMB fares (And this is not necessarily the case for all origin points!).

So- no real way of knowing, unless you know that a)fares exist, and, b) there is availability in the required fare-class ("I" in this case). I am sure that even in this day and age, a reasonable to large amount of CX traffic is travel agent originated, hence CX's absence from the sharp end of the curve on things online..

hillrider

Not at all: as I like choice, I appreciate tips that would allow me to have full choice (that includes CX) on future trips (hence this thread). ^

Thanks for finding out where the bug lies: I never selected flexible dates, it was the default. The results screen is a gem, as it give you these warnings in red (translated from Italian):

I know for a fact that you earn miles in "I". And, of course, you can pre select your seats.

And I cannot find the fare rules anywhere.

Ouch.

There's a workaround for b) in ExpertFlyer. a) is the real issue, especially given that the website itself is giving out misleading information (see my post #6 above)

Don't know about CX (and given how terrible their website is you're probably correct) but increasing direct sales is an industry-wide top priority, one led by IATA: it's a sure way to reduce distribution costs while at the same having greater brand control and, supposedly, increased customer satisfaction.

U.S. legacy carriers now sell 60% of non-corporate tickets (about 50% of the revenue) through their own websites, and this is growing every year. LCCs sell upwards of 80% of all their tickets direct. Europe is not too dissimilar.

In any case, my corporate travel agent can only quote me EUR 9.114 on those flights, so there's no love for agents from CX (and why does CX even bother giving them those unreal, unsellable fares?).

jagmeets

Suspect these promotional fares' pages are maintained by local offices..have seen similarly bad ones on other fares.

For fare rules, make a dummy booking all the way through to the payment page, and you can see a link to the detailed conditions right at the end (where you'd check to accept rules etc).

I use EF too- just beware that CX uses married segment logic (& possibly POS limitations), so things might come out a tad different at times.

And yes, I'd love to have an easier way to search as well- unfortunately haven't found one yet..the whole process is manual, hence researching can take a fair bit of time!

1010101

But HK is a fair way behind the US and Europe in this respect. Opaqueness and shopping around is accepted, even encouraged, in most transactions. Flights are no different. I certainly haven't seen CX getting any better at this in my years here.

hillrider

Thanks for your sharing your experience and perspective. I am slowly learning the Asian preference for (artificially fabricated) "bargains".

My (western-biased) perspective was that with Asia having the highest share of LCCs at 58% (vs. 40% in Europe and a share in the 30s in North America) I was expecting more direct transparency in base pricing, not less. With LCCs it's all about lowering costs, hence selling from their website. With them you know that you will always get the best prices directly on their site, and had assumed this has rubbed off the incumbents even more so than it already has in North America or Europe. But it looks like it hasn't, and maybe that helps explain why the share of LCCs is so much higher in Asia.

Having said that, this itinerary is ex-Italy and priced on the Italian version of the CX website (in Italian language), not from or in HK. In Europe pretty much all airlines price transparently on their websites, many with money back guarantees. So CX looks way out of place in that context.

Back to my original question: any reliable way to get CX's real prices online?

percysmith

Yes you see it a lot in Asia - Singapore Kiasu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiasu or Hongkie 蝕桌 http://edu.sina.com.hk/news/3/1/4/46445/1.html

daniellam

Unfortunately not :-(

However, if you happen to be a travel agent, you can sign up for cxagents.com

Depending on your region, CX publishes their fare sheets in PDF format on this website so that travel agents in certain markets can follow the instructions to issue tickets for their clients (and even suggest the markup that the travel agent should add to the ticket). These are for fares that are not published in the GDS and may be lower/higher and have more restrictions (eg. no combinations with other fares, no interlining etc.) than the GDS fares. Certain online travel agencies also use these fare sheets to program into their system so that they can sell these fares to their customers online (I know that the UK, France versions of Expedia do, as well as the Italian AMEX agency mentioned earlier by the OP).

Note: AFAIK, the US and Canadian versions of the cxagents.com website don't have any faresheets as all the market fares ex-Canada / ex-US are distributed in the GDS (except fares targeted to and viewable only to travel agents who serve certain ethnic communities).

Here is a link showing an example of what a fare sheet looks like. (This is an old one I found by googling the Tour Code on my cousin's CX e-ticket)

http://file.fourseastravel.com/Qmult...13-28Feb14.pdf

If you walk into a travel agency in Asia, the travel agents are more likely to refer to a binder on their desk with a bunch of fare sheets (or look at PDF files such as the one above) as opposed to the GDS (unless they have them programmed in as "private fares") when you want to ask them for a fare quote.