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Priceline.com Permanently Eliminates Booking Fees on Published Airline Fares
Priceline.com® announced that it will permanently eliminate airline ticket booking fees on all published domestic and international fares. This means that, in most cases, priceline.com customers will pay less for their tickets than they would at other major full-service online travel reservation services, including Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz.
The booking fee elimination applies to all priceline.com tickets purchased on a published-price basis and does not apply to priceline.com's Name Your Own Price® airline ticketing service, which already delivers some of the deepest discounts among the so-called opaque ticketing services. In a recent internal study of the top 100 customer searches for domestic airline tickets, priceline.com had a Name Your Own Price® fare available for purchase significantly more often than the other opaque airline tickets service. In those cases where both services had an opaque fare available, priceline.com had the lower all-in price approximately 90 percent of the time.
"Today's announcement reinforces priceline.com's brand position as the online travel service with the best deals," said priceline.com President and Chief Executive Officer Jeffery H. Boyd. "We already offer consumers an easy, one-stop way to do comparative ticket searches for most popular airlines, flights and prices. With our new no-booking-fee policy, priceline.com customers can get the best possible price on their tickets no matter which flight they choose."
To check out priceline.com's no-booking-fee airline tickets service, visit www.priceline.com/flights.
Customers choosing priceline.com for their airline tickets will enjoy other significant benefits besides no booking fees. In addition to round-trips on the same airline, priceline.com allows customers to "mix-and-match" their flights, choosing one airline and itinerary for the outbound leg of their trip and another for the return, also without a booking fee. Combining airlines can improve itineraries and savings, which is why approximately 20 percent of priceline.com's retail tickets now sold include two carriers. When these types of tickets are sold through other online travel reservation agencies, or via meta-search site referrals, customers typically pay a booking fee. Priceline.com customers also have the ability to easily package their airline tickets with a discounted hotel and/or rental car from priceline.com's collection of thousands of partner hotels and rental car companies around the world.
About Priceline.com Inc.
Priceline.com Incorporated operates priceline.com, a leading U.S. online travel service for value-conscious leisure travelers, and Booking.com, a leading international online hotel reservation service. In the U.S., priceline.com gives customers more ways to save on their airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, vacation packages and cruises than any other Internet travel service. In addition to getting the best published prices, leisure travelers can narrow their searches using priceline.com's TripFilter™ advanced search technology, create packages to save even more money, and take advantage of priceline.com's famous Name Your Own Price® service, which can deliver the lowest prices available.