Xandrios

Appreciate your feedback as you are obviously much more familiar with this topic than most of us here.

One thing I was wondering is if the size may have played a role here. The news reports that Tripsta started building a debt 'to the airlines' from 2015 onwards. Perhaps, exactly because Tripsta was doing such huge volumes, airlines and/or GDS were more accepting of this behaviour than they would be towards a smaller TA..

From what I understand Tripsta is blaming Travelport for its demise. This, kind of, implies that a large part of the debt is with them - otherwise Travelport would not be able to cause such a sudden cash problem at Tripsta. So the Travelport GDS seems to be involved in some way or another...though both parties are very silent on their exact role.

DELLAS

Rumour has it they indeed owe Travelport a substantial amount. Now this agrreement would be for subscription of access to the Travelport platform and other aspects of the products offered by Travelport to their offices and employees. Such contracts in the past have included even the computers/printers/servers etc... Of course unless you see the contract no ones knows what was included but when an agreement of that size goes belly up then yes it could close down a company which owes hundreds of thousands both to Travelport and airlines,suppliers etc..


From the announcement in 2015:

Travelport and Tripsta announce new agreement

Travelport (NYSE:TVPT), a leading Travel Commerce Platform, has today announced it has signed a new long term agreement with Tripsta, one of the biggest online travel agencies in Europe. Tripsta, based in Greece, operates the travelplanet24 brand and recently merged with airtickets.com to create the largest OTA in South East Europe and Greece’s largest e-commerce company. Tripsta has a presence in over 45 countries and carries over two million passengers annually.

The new agreement sees Tripsta connect to Travelport’s Travel Commerce Platform via its Universal API. It will allow their travel agents to search, sell and book Travelport’s unrivalled content including branded fares and ancillaries from over 400 network and low cost carriers, over 650,000 hotels, rail, cruise and car rental companies. Tripsta and Travelport already have an existing relationship and today’s announcement significantly extends that.

Philipp Brinkmann, CEO of Tripsta commented: “We are pleased to have entered into this new long term agreement with Travelport. Travelport has impressed us with the investment they’ve made in new technology and the content they have on their platform. We are looking forward to working even more closely together to help grow our business.”

Leonidas Zotos, Travelport’s Managing Director of Travelport for Greece, Israel and Cyprus commented: “This is a fantastic win for Travelport and represents a significant new chapter in Travelport and Tripsta’s already strong relationship. Tripsta, Travelplanet24 and airtickets.com are big brands, not only in Greece, but across Europe and it’s great they have seen the value in our Travel Commerce Platform.”

http://www.travelport.com/company/me...-new-agreement

huntk

Here's what I got by email today when I FINALLY got a contact that worked for an actual person.

Dear Mr. xxxxxxxx,

We would like to inform you that due to technical issues in our system we are not able to assist you further with your request for your booking xxxxxxxxx.

We would strongly recommend you contacting the airline company directly in order to process any amendment/cancellation.

In case the airline company redirects you again to tripsta, you may explain to them that the operation of our agency has temporarily been suspended and there is no possibility to process any further action for your e-ticket.

Therefore, we hereby provide authorization to the airline company to assist you further with any related request.

We would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your understanding.

Best regards,
Name Redacted
Passenger Service Center

Xandrios

I have also successfully flown and finalised the last tickets that were booked with Tripsta. Pfew!

Now the question is though...which OTA to use? There is Tripair / Petas / Altair which I have succesfully used in the past, but I'm less sure about now. There is also figame.gr but I have no experiences with them. Non-Greek there is Travelgenio and GoToGate which are cheap but I have not heard much good about...though have not used them before myself.

Alexandros Bravos

Do you experience prices much cheaper than the ones quoted by airliners' websites when looking up on OTAs? Just wondering, as I have never used their services.

Knobbgb

For me, the prices have always been the same (to within a few cents for currency conversion). The exception was that airtickets used to occasionally send me a 5 euro discount voucher which I could use against any flight. The main advantage of an OTA for me is the flexibility - I just booked LIS-ATH-PAS with a 22 hour stopover in Athens which was just not possible directly with A3 (even using the more-options/multi-flight tool). This saved me around 30 euro on making two separate bookings (no ATH departure tax due for the connecting booking). So cheaper - yes, sort of. I used Expedia for this booking but I'd rather steer away from the mega-monopolies so I am looking for a smaller, good quality, reliable OTA if anyone has any ideas.

Xandrios

It depends. Often, there is hardly any difference. A random search for a few dates shows 117 euro at Aegean direct, and various OTA's charging slightly less with Tripair being the cheapest at 109 euro. Note that OTA's charge difference prices depending on your search engine: When coming from Momondo (rather than Skyscanner) the same flight is 113 euro at Tripair.

However sometimes there are promotions that may be worth your while. Often these are related to coupon codes, or general discount-days. For example Airtickets had a promo late last year that offered 20 euro off when you paid with mastercard. So a 55 euro Aegean one-way ticket (40% off sale) became 35 euro. Back then they even had domestic flights for <10 euro. That is quite a lot of savings.

Another one that works well is Travix which operates a whole range of OTA websites. These are reliable and every now and then offer 25 euro discount. That offsets their booking fees and allows to book flights at the prices shown in their search results. Those are generally 10-20 euro under the airline price.

But, booking through OTA's can have disadvantages, this thread being a prime example of that. Things can go wrong, and, you will almost always be less flexible if you want to do changes. There are exceptions (These airtickets Aegean tickets can simply be changed online at the Aegean website for example), but, you can have bad luck and end up with a ticket that is not changeable. Or only changeable if you pay an additional 50 euro to the OTA. Or you have to deal with an expensive 0900 number for support, etc.

Personally I often use OTA's if the savings are large enough, and the flight is straightforward. And at these prices I don't mind. From the 15 (or so) one-way flights I booked with airtickets I have probably not used 5 or so - simply because it was not worth investing 60 euro change-fees into a 35 euro GoLight ticket. A new ticket is often cheaper (or around the same price).

Often1

The bottom line problem with third-party opaque vendors is that everything is just fine until it is not. If one can save EUR 5, why not? On the other hand, when things go wrong, the ability to have them fixed by the plating or operating carrier (depending on when the issue arises) is critical. When you purchase through one of the vendors, check:

1. Reputation. Not from friends and colleagues who may have had successful trips, but where there were problems during the trip which were properly handled by the vendor.
2. 24-hour customer service. It does you little good to be standing at NRT only to find that your vendor does not open for 5 more hours because it is located in Europe and is not open.
3. Fees. Bear in mind that vendors may impose their own fees above those imposed by a carrier and they may impose other conditions such as inflexibility above and beyond what the carrier imposes.
4. Ticketing. Sometimes it is possible for a vendor to issue an itinerary through the use of multiple tickets. That is fine so long as one understands that one is not connecting but simply transferring between tickets. Transfers are generally not protected, meaning that if you no show for your onwards flight, your ticket is cancelled and you must purchase a new one and are responsible for your various ground expenses.
5. Quality of customer service. How long does it take to reach someone who is in a position of authority to fix a problem. Again, standing at NRT only to be told that someone will call back within 24 hours, is not customer service.

While there is always the possibility that a vendor can replicate "full service" at deep discounts, that is rarely the case. The cheapest ticket is not always the least expensive journey and the failure to do due diligence on someone where you are spending significant sums online is your responsibility.

Knobbgb

Hmm not really - I fell fowl of that one! What they were doing was charging 20 Euro EXTRA if you DIDN'T pay with Mastercard. If you looked carefully you'd see that the headline price suddenly increased by 20 Euro at that screen in the hope that you'd be distracted by the discount and wouldn't notice. They added the extra 20 euro in as unspecified 'airline and airport taxes' and then deducted it again for some people. Totally illegal and a desperate attempt to increase revenue before they rightly went bust. I have screenshots to back this up, if you're interested, but there's probably no point worrying about it now, they're history...

Xandrios

hmm, yes and no. Yes, a little was added in my case (1,5 euro fee?), but no - the total price paid was still about 20 euro less than what Aegean was charging for the same flights. At least for me, at the time that I booked them..

Because, like you, I did compare their final prices with Aegean to be sure they didn't screw me in some way

East_and_West

My experience was different. I usually prefer direct bookings (I just use OTAs to find the best flights for me) but when I saw this deal, around last October I think, it seemed too good to ignore. I compared prices on airtickets website with prices on the official airlines' websites and they were indeed 20 euro cheaper. So I booked two flights (actually one trip with self-transfer), HER-ATH (GQ) and ATH-CPH (A3). As @Xandrios wrote, some small fee was added at the payment stage but in total I saved something like 35+ euro. Fortunately enough my flights were early in November, long before the default of airtickets...

GBobon

how can you check this? they never let you know before paying that there will be X reservations instead of 1 single PNR for 2 legs or more. I avoid booking thru OTAs just because in case of cancelations or flight schedule change will be very difficult to get a proper rerouting. i read many horror stories and IMO is not worth the hassle.

Carpacchio

I always use Swoodoo or Kayak metasearch to get an overview of what's available. Sometimes, you get great opportunities: I booked a flight for summer (albeit with LH) which I got for 200 EUR, while on LH it was 300 EUR. Seems the OTA (cheaptickets) had reserved some tickets, since the booking class wasn't offered by LH anymore.
That said - if the difference is small (up to 20 EUR), I prefer to go with the airline directly in order to avoid any hassle in case of IRROPS.

Xandrios

Sometimes they do let you know (eg expedia does). And there are a few that specialise in combining separate tickets (eg kiwi, flyhacks).
While I fully agree with that OTA's can be more difficult, I never really had much issues. For example I have had flights change on me with:

Tripair.gr: Received an email with a new proposal (same flights but day later), replied with a routing through CDG (rather than KLM direct) and the ticket was updated without problems.

Fludladen.de: Received a phone call that one of my Alitalia flights was canceled. Told them I need time to consider alternatives and handled the matter per email. Did not get the flights I wanted, but this was due to Alitalia being inflexible. They did let me pick any other date/route as long as on Alitalia metal or codeshare.

Supersaver.nl: CSA Flight through PRG was canceled, received a proposal by email (Very early departure on CSA). Replied with a much better suitable AF routing through CDG and was changed as requested.

But, I may have just been lucky. It can go much worse. And I think that Often1's post #38 above sums up the risks very well. It depends much on your itinerary and your flexibility if going through an OTA would be a good choice or not.