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What's the history of "Saturday Night Stay Required"?

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What's the history of "Saturday Night Stay Required"?

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Old Feb 17, 2004, 10:40 pm
  #1  
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What's the history of "Saturday Night Stay Required"?

This has always seemed pretty arbitrary to me. Does anyone know how this started and why airlines insist on this for many discounted fares?
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Old Feb 17, 2004, 11:06 pm
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The idea is to charge more for business travelers who are spending OPM and less for leisure travelers who are spending TOM. They figure anybody staying over a Saturday night must be a leisure traveler.
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Old Feb 17, 2004, 11:27 pm
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I always felt that it is a way of being able to advertise low prices and then engage in bait and switch.

Once a businessman finds out that he will have to stay Saturday night, and add two hotel nights to his expenses, he goes for the higher fare and leaves on Monday morning.
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Old Feb 17, 2004, 11:33 pm
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<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Dovster:
I always felt that it is a way of being able to advertise low prices and then engage in bait and switch.</font>
The glass half full answer is that it was a way for airlines to offer lower fares to leisure travelers without cannibalizing their business traveler revenue.
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Old Feb 18, 2004, 12:52 am
  #5  
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Even travelling on business I sometimes still fly out on a Saturday becasue it saves so much money. It does at least then mean that I can do some sightseeing on the Sunday and am rested before going to the office on Monday
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Old Feb 18, 2004, 8:56 am
  #6  
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<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mbstone:
The idea is to charge more for business travelers who are spending OPM and less for leisure travelers who are spending TOM. They figure anybody staying over a Saturday night must be a leisure traveler.</font>
Exactly. Full-Y flyers departing ORD on Thurdsay morning for LAX generally want to depart Friday after lunch to get home Friday evening, not on Sunday morning.

Business travelers generally detest being away from home on Saturday and Sunday, so the Saturday night stay evolved as a fairly good proxy for separating business flyers from leisure flyers.

Nowadays, however, more and more business flyers are willing (forced?) to put up with weekend travel to save a buck (or thousands).
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Old Feb 18, 2004, 10:46 am
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The saturday night stay rule is being eliminated by some of the airlines--like Alaska.
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