Monday, October 24, 2011

THE DILEMMA OF AIRLINE TICKET PROMOTION

                              It is a known fact that quite a number of Nigerian travellers wait for seasons when airlines have ticket promos to travel to places like Europe and America. The reason for this is simple, most of them don't have anything in particular to do in these countries than to visit families and friends and most importantly, shop. This allows for free choice in their travel dates.
                              Airlines that fly Nigeria knowing this therefore throw up ticket promotions as often as they can to encourage travellers to first of all travel and secondly to make them their (traveller) first choice which is a good idea.
                               This piece is about educating the teeming public on what is the likely total of that promotion advert they are reading in the of in the papers right now. One particular dilemma of travellers that will not be the fault of airlines though is the fact that when the airline advertises, they only inform the public about the basic fare of these tickets, this can be as low as 300 dollars at times.An uninformed traveller having seen this fare rushes to make reservation believing he or she can spend for instance 50,000 Naira to purchase a travel ticket to London from Lagos. As at today, please know that the total taxes on tickets purchased in Nigeria and which have their origin from any part of Nigeria carries a sum of not less than 80,000 Naira (Nigeria currency). This is a fee that will never be advertised along with the basic fare.                                  The area that concerns the airline however is the fact that they advertise ridiculous fares that are neither feasible nor possible.It is becoming a ridiculous trend when airlines advertise a promo on TV, newspaper and Radio and the said promo will not be available for sale anywhere, not even on the airline's website.It even becomes more ridiculous when you consider how much they spend on these adverts. Let the truth be told, they are deliberately misleading the travellers. Imagine how much explanation I had to give to a good client who called me resently saying a particular airline was selling ticket to London for 65,000 Naira. That is just one of the very many confusions being thrown the travellers way in the name of ticket promos.  
So dear customers, next time you see a ticket promo advert, don't jump for joy, it might just be another hope that will be dashed as usual.