7. Are the Low Cost Airlines relevant to your travel?

Whilst the Low Cost Airlines may not appeal to all, they certainly can save money with fares on some routes as little as 99p plus taxes. This will be dependent upon route, timings, lead in time and ultimately demand.

To ensure that the lowest fares are consistently selected and that use of these carriers does not conflict with your Travel Policy, the Low Cost Airlines should really be booked by your travel agent.

Whilst the temptation is obviously there to book directly, to ensure that savings are maximised one needs to consider the following:

Agents often have specialised software that enables us to ‘scrape’ the websites of all low cost carriers in one hit, thus instantly finding the cheapest available route.

Your agent will also be able to compare the Low Cost fare to the schedule fare (as the Low Cost carriers are not always the cheapest!)

The labour cost of the client making the booking (Traveller / Manager / Director) is invariably far higher than the token fee the agent is obliged to charge, aside from the loss of productivity.

By the agent making the booking the purchase of travel is centralised, remains in policy, payment is centralised and there is no waste of resource in reconciling expenses.