Originally Posted by
moondog
The cheap tickets are (obviously) cheap, and hotels are also cheap. The bureaucracy the voucher entails --and dealing with passengers-- costs them more money than the hotels themselves. If you fly business class, they will hook you up because the hotel cost is minimal for them, but it's defies logic to offer free hotels on bargain basement fares.
I can't agree more. I am pretty sure I had journeys for which they actually lost money. As I have status, I was staying two times in grade B hotels (inbound and outbound) on some 200$ fare (before taxes). I am pretty picky but can't complain on that business wise decision. My wife managed to score a free presidential suite once, even better.
On the other hand, I keep reading on the Internet "China Southern is okay and if you have a long layover, they give you free hotel". That was also a good marketing move to get more visibility/customers especially from the European/US side of the world. If they were smart enough, they should have offered customers to pay little extra to get a room while booking the tickets. I am sure that's going to create a lot of fights at the gate 51 in the next months.
Anyway, in most fares, the gap is pretty huge between the cheap tickets/regular ones. I'll prefer to get a cheap 200 rmb night around the airport on my own rather than spending more cash on the flight tickets.
In terms of communication, they are pretty bad though. There are many changes happening and I didn't receive a single email. I have them on my wechat but still struggling to understand everything.