Originally Posted by Kiwi_FF

It used to be you made a reservation in advance and it was ticketed just before travel. In the online world airlines saw the cashflow Dell pioneered in selling computers online with payment in advance and reservations and ticketing became mostly concurrent with a big boost to cashflow. A billion in cash in advance is material.

But as we now see p in advance and you are an unsecured creditor. Loyalty counts for little. Many of us probably understood the risk but reluctantly accepted it.

Given how badly airlines, OTA’s and others in the travel sector are behaving I wonder how many people will make bookings and payments in advance for the future?

I know I won’t. I’ll take the chance there will Always be something similar available at the last minute.

By taking a hard line now and making it difficult like 6 months for a refund, credits only, high fees before refunds and all the other tricks I think there will be a very long tail of changed customer behaviour in the future and the travel sector is bound to regret this in time to come.