Say Goodbye to Online Booking Fees!

If you have ever booked a flight online through a service such as Orbitz, Travelocity, Priceline, or Expedia, you are familiar with online booking fees, a small charge added to the price of the ticket that you purchased online. For the four previously mentioned services, though, these fees are history.
 
Although Priceline.com had not been charging fees since 2007, Expedia announced last week that it would end the online booking fees. Orbitz Worldwide announced today that it would discontinue the fees on domestic and international flights. Travelocity quickly publicized that it had been waiving these fees as well.

Image: Flickr

 
The economic crisis has taken a heavy toll on the airline industry and these four companies are hoping that removing the fee will make online booking through their services a more attractive alternative. Still, though, analysts have noted that these fees are a significant source of revenue for the companies and that the fees might not be gone permanently.
 
“I can’t see them not coming back at some point. That’s how the make money,” insists Morningstar analyst Warren Miller, who also emphasized that online booking fees constitute about 15 percent of these services’ revenue.