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Europe's Low Cost Carriers Offer Great Deals
If you haven't heard of Opodo, the hip travel site launched by several major European airlines, you will as soon as you plan to vacation at any of Europe's family hotspots. Opodo, launched in the dire days of November, 2001, is owned by nine of Europe's leading airlines - Aer Lingus, Air France, Alitalia, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Finnair, Iberia, KLM and Lufthansa and by one of the leading Global Distribution System (GDS) and travel industry technology providers, Amadeus, which today holds a controlling interest in the company.
Cheap Fares: From the Majors, a New Industry
Claiming to offer "an unbiased and competitively priced online travel service for world travel, with access to flights from over 500 airlines, 65,000 hotel properties, charter flights, city breaks, package holidays and 7000 rental car locations worldwide, as well as travel insurance and airport parking," Opodo is well positioned to lead Europe's online travel market.
Like its US counterpart, Orbitz.com (sold by the partnership of US airlines which founded it, and now part of Travelport, a private company), Opodo often has the scoop on the deepest discounted web-only fares. You don't have to constantly search the site, you can register at www.opodo.co.uk; www.opodo.de or www.opodo.fr (the UK, German or French sites) for weekly e-mail airfare bulletins.
On a continent where fast, efficient and well-priced railroads have dominated regional travel for a century, cost is a huge factor in getting around. That's why a crop of European low cost carriers modeled on America's successful Southwest Airlines -- but with incredibly cheap fares -- have taken off.
Another reason is trust: strong consumer-oriented regulations are imposed by the European Union on airlines based within its purview. In the experience of one FTF staffer, they work. In this real-life example, when one of the biggest companies, Easyjet, was forced to cancel its London-Istanbul route due to a change in governmental air traffic rules, the company reimbursed all passengers for the cost of rebooking that route on any other available airline.
If you're ready to go the low fare, no-frills route, check out Europe's top budget airlines known in the trade as LCCs or LCAs (low-cost airlines). According to the United Kingdom's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), in 1996, 3.1 million passengers used LCCs between the U.K. and other EU cities. Within a decade, that number jumped to 51.5 million passengers -- in comparison to the 47.2 million passengers flying full-service, full-fare airlines and 25 million on charter flights in 2005. This movement is changing the travel landscape of Europe enormously.
The Jones LaSalle Hotel Group studied its effect on behalf of the continent's hotel industry in 2006. According to their senior VP, Chris Martin, they found a "push effect" from the LCCs, that comes from sending new clients to new destinations they serve, causing these tourist destinations to grow quickly. Conversely, the LCCs "pull effect" decreased tourism to such gateways as Paris and London, whose residents are using LCCs to vacation elsewhere. Interestingly, a "derived effect" from the popularity of LCCs has generated substantial growth in the regions housing the secondary airports that LCCs typically use to keep costs down.
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