“Fare Jumping,” “Class Switching” Hamper Online Sites in Battle to Sell Consumers First-Class Fares

Consumer Reports WebWatch New Report Issued at "Trust or Consequence" Conference in Dallas Finds Airline Branded Sites Fare Worst 

YONKERS, NY, March 3, 2005: Despite increased consumer demand online, none of the top three travel Web sites has emerged as the best place to buy first-class airline tickets. In fact, in a new study by Consumer Reports WebWatch, each site showed problems from displaying fares that jump in price to labeling business- or economy-class fares as first class.

WebWatch today released the study, "Major Travel Sites Face Credibility Crunch," in conjunction with its one-day national conference in Dallas, Texas, on trust and credibility issues in the online travel market. Authored by William J. McGee, the study is the latest in almost three years of unique, performance-based research designed to improve consumer experiences among sites in the leading online market sector.

Consumer demand for first-class tickets increased almost 10 percent from 2003 to 2004, U.S. Department of Transportation statistics show. Consumer Reports WebWatch tested a variety of domestic routes among six sites: Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, and the Web sites of American Airlines, Continential Airlines, and Delta Air Lines. Testers concluded that buying a first-class ticket online can be much more complicated than buying an economy class ticket.

Among the study's key findings:
*  "Fare-jumping," when a rate for a ticket suddenly increases or decreases during the booking process, sometimes without notification to the user, continues to occur on Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity.
* The single-largest incident of fare-jumping occurred while testing Expedia, totaling $748.00.
* Although testers queried sites only for first-class fares, sites continually returned itineraries with business- and even economy-class flights.
* Testers found problems on Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz with missing or incorrect labeling information for the airlines' classes of service.
* Expedia led all six sites in returning the lowest, first-class fare four of 10 times. Travelocity returned the highest percentage of nonstop first-class flights. Orbitz recorded the highest savings for a single itinerary, returning a first-class fare $1,348.70, or 242 percent, less than the lowest fare offered by its closest rival.

The full report, including in-depth description of methodology, can be found at:
http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/dynamic/travel-report-first-class-airfare-abstract.cfm.

The WebWatch conference convened senior executives from the top three travel Web sites (Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity), major airline sites, hotel sites, and relative market newcomers Kayak.com, Mobissimo and SideStep. Transcripts of the conference's proceedings will be available in the coming weeks on the Consumer Reports WebWatch site.

WebWatch's next national conference on trust and credibility issues online, focusing on search engines and health information seaching, will be Thursday, June 9, in San Francisco.

About Consumer Reports WebWatch
Consumer Reports WebWatch is the leader in investigative reporting on trust and credibility in the online marketplace. WebWatch uses the proven methods of Consumer Reports to produce comprehensive research, breakthrough conferences and serves as a daily resource of unbiased and trustworthy information. Its research agenda includes entire online marketplaces, such as travel, search, health, financial services and more. WebWatch is a project of Consumers Union and is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Open Society Institute. WebWatch's investigative reports, articles and news are available to the general public at http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/

About Consumers Union
Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, is an expert, independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to work for a fair, just, and safe marketplace for all consumers and to empower consumers to protect themselves. To achieve this mission, we test, inform, and protect. To maintain our independence and impartiality, CU accepts no outside advertising, no free test samples, and has no agenda other than the interests of consumers. CU supports itself through the sale of its information products and services, individual contributions, and a few noncommercial grants. Consumer Reports content can be found online at ConsumerReports.org. Consumers Union's public policy work can be found online at ConsumersUnion.org.

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