ABSTRACT
As airlines have learned over the years, business travellers generally want to keep their options open until just before they travel - in case they want to change a departure time, or simply cancel the trip. In contrast, a leisure traveller usually has no need for such flexibility. After observing these general characteristics of the two groups, the airlines realised they could exploit that difference in their general attitudes, and do so in a very simple way: charge low prices for tickets sold well before the travel date, and charge high fares for tickets sold close to the date of travel. Besides discrimination that rested on ticket conditions, most airlines offered two or even three aircraft cabins, each with its own fares and seat densities. To encourage leisure travel, an airline also offered a range of discount fares for travel in the economy-class/coach cabin. The advent of website booking engines made it much easier to introduce greater flexibility in pricing.
