maple

Does one earn miles for tickets purchased through online sites like Travelocity and Expedia? Or are those tickets considered consolidator fares and thus earn no miles?

I remember reading somewhere that an FTer purchased a ticket on Expedia, only to find out that no miles will be accrued

Thanks for any input.
Maple

WebCrawler

Hi Maple -
I am not sure about Expedia, but all tickets that my company has purchased on Travelocity have earned miles. Travelocity offers the same fares (9 times out of 10) that you would get on the actual airline site. I usually use Travelocity now as a guide and then buy my ticket via AA.com/ual.com/Delta.com etc.
Hope this helps !

maple

WebCrawler,

Thanks for the tip! Especially that part about milking the Travelocity system, then purchasing on AA.com!

Cheers, Maple

dhammer53

We did receive miles for 2 tix purchased on Expedia last October. On United.

Dan

red_cadet

Not to my knowledge. Expedia and Travelocity are more travel agents, so would you not get miles from your travel agent?

I think what you're thinking of is Priceline.com and Hotwire. Those are consolidators, and so you probably won't get miles there.

-red_cadet
[email protected]

CozumelJen

I have always gotten my miles from expedia.com. But, recently I was almost denied hotel credit for a room I booked over expedia.com (the hotel clerk claimed that the rate was "too low", when I called Starwood directly I got the credit.) However, I noticed this weekend that using expedia, it still looks like you used a travel agent! My reservation said "Microsoft Corp" on it. I do not work for Microsoft and when I looked more closely, I noticed that it said that the reservation had actually been made by this travel agency. I assumed that the agency handles a lot of Microsoft business or maybe they just typed in a corporate code in error, I wasn't going to argue, but when I told the hotel that I had not used an agent but instead booked on the internet using expedia.com, they said that this is always how the reservations come. (It made sense I guess, but I thought that the reservation would have said expedia.com or something, not had a travel agent's name.)

Eugene

CozumelJen -- Expedia is a Microsoft's spin-off, remember?

JS

1) Travelocity and Expedia are travel agents (albeit without the lying and hard selling of human travel agents ).

2) If everyone used Travelocity or Expedia to search, and then bought the ticket from the airline's web site, those two sites would disappear (many other travel sites have already disappeared due to airline's commission cuts). You would then have to search every single individual airline's web site (or visit a human travel agent and put up with the lying and hard selling ).

I happily lose 1000 on-line-booking miles in exchange for being able to search all airlines on one helpful site that doesn't crash.

And, I have phoned Expedia when I had a question or problem with a booking made by me, and they are always nice and helpful over the phone (unlike Delta res. agents!)

[This message has been edited by JS (edited 03-12-2001).]

Steve M

I too use Travelocity and ITN to do airfare and availability research, then use the airlines' web site (or call them) to do the actual purchase. One reason is for the bonus miles, but another reason is that the airlines will sometimes tell you to "call your travel agent" when you need to make a change if they were booked through one of those sites.

Anyway, I realize that Travelocity and ITN need bookings if they are going to stay in business, which is why I make all my hotel reservations through them. Since as far as I know, they still make the full 10% commission on hotel bookings, I'm probably a much more profitable customer than the typical person that buys only airline tickets. I figure this is a fair way for me to compensate them for the (free) airfare information they're providing me.