Watch this video for an overview. Then, schedule a meeting with your rate desk trainer to go over what the Rate Desk does for the company and how you will interact with them in your role.
Watch this video for an overview. Then, schedule a meeting with your rate desk trainer to go over what the Rate Desk does for the company and how you will interact with them in your role.
Revisit this presentation about Fare types.
Talk with your Amadeus trainer if anything feels unclear.
One way the company sources product is buying tickets from different vendor partners.
All of the vendor information is saved in Kite, but we have a couple of additional reference documents to help you learn about vendor and what they are best at.
Review these documents and watch this quick overview video on how to navigate Vendors in Kite.
http://crm-dev.bootsnall.com is our testing environment for Kite.
Every trip idea created in Kite is also created here, but nothing you do here affects real people or real data.
You can save or change anything you want. This is a place to play around and experiment with creating Trip Solutions.
This makes it the perfect place to practice as you learn the details of pricing and researching complex international airfare.
You will have learned some commands for pricing Private (Net) fares in your Amadeus training checklist. Now is the time to practice more with them and familiarize yourself with our airline contracts!
Use this sheet for quick pricing reference on our contracts.
Try to price the following Private (Net) fares in our office ID
Skills you need to complete this test:
To add your answers, take a screenshot of the results using Jing.
Example:
Route + Date: MSP - CUZ 01JUL
We have other vendors, called consolidator partners, that we can use to book flights. We still do this in Amadeus, but we have to search in their respective office ID instead of AirTreks'.
The four most used vendors are Mill, GTT, Exito, and Club. You can reference this spreadsheet to see which vendors are most used in each region and which airlines are best to look for in each. Once you do this for a while, you'll start to know which vendors to search for particular routes (like using GTT or Mill for US to Europe flights, or Club for Sao Paulo to Johannesburg flights).
There are different rules for each of these partners. For some partners and airlines, we can price a certain flight with that partner but still book the flight in the AirTreks office ID and PNR. For others, we have to create a new PNR in that partner's office ID and GK (ghost book) that particular flight in the main PNR.
See this video for examples of finding better fares using our consolidator partners.
Watch this video to see how you can switch between office IDs
Here is a reference document to our Amadeus consolidator partners
Try to price the following Private (Net) fares from our consolidator partners.
Skills you need to complete this test:
To add your answers, take a screenshot of the results using Jing.
Example:
Vendor: Mill Run
Route + Date: NYC-PAR Oct 1
Some airlines do not give us net prices, but rather a discount on the fares they release to others.
Look up these published fares, and calculate how much commission we can get on our contracts or our vendors' contracts.
Example:
How much commission would we get on our DL/KL/AF/VS contract for this flight?
Answer: 18%
Not all flights we book are booked in Amadeus. Sometimes we use online-only airlines who don't allow booking in Amadeus. This can be tricky because these flights can show up in an Amadeus search, so you have to be careful.
The three main online airlines we use that CANNOT be booked in Amadeus are Jetstar, Scoot, and AirAsia. Both airlines operate mainly in Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, China, and Japan.
There is a third online-only site that we use, but it's not an airline. The site is called Mystifly, and they are good for booking low-cost European airlines that are not in Amadeus (EasyJet, Ryan Air). They are also good for checking various flights in Asia.
Each website is different and has different rules for booking the flights.
1. Jetstar: We have an account with them and book directly on their website, then we GK (ghost book) the flight into the main PNR of our customer. Watch this video to see how to book a flight on Jetstar.
2. Scoot: Same process as JetStar above. We have a doc here that walks you through the process. Watch this video to see how to book a flight on Scoot.
3. AirAsia: Cynthia (or whoever else might ticket an order) will book AirAsia flights for you, but as an agent, you still must go to their website to price out the flight, then GK (ghost book) the flight into the main PNR. Watch this video to see how to add a flight on AirAsia.
4. Mystifly: Check out this doc (which has videos) for instructions on how to use Mystifly.
Let your trainer know how you are doing!
Answer these questions and set up a 20 min zoom meeting with your trainer to review them.
Your trainer should check this off your list once they review.
Airlines differ greatly between in the quality of their product offerings. Business class on Iceland Air cannot compare with that of Qatar, so it's important to consider the overall value of a product, not just the cost.
The best way to become informed of the products you don't have first hand experience with, is to cross reference written reviews with youtube video reviews and the info you accumulate from clients and colleagues. Even checking out the seating configuration on Seat Guru can give you insight which may help you in determining the best option to offer to your client.
We utilize what's called open-jaw flights all the time to get better pricing and schedules for our customers. It's one of our most used "tricks" to help maximize multi-stop airfare.
The best way to explain an open-jaw is to show an example multi-stop route:
Houston - Paris - Rome - Tokyo - Houston
An open-jaw flight would be searching for flights from Houston to Paris, then from Tokyo to Houston, all on one ticket.
Instead of searching for a series of one-way flights, it's often more affordable to search for various open-jaw flights to see what your options are. This could save a lot of money and/or have better schedules.
This is one way you can search for an open-jaw flight in Amadeus, from Houston to Paris on Oct. 9, then from Tokyo back to Houston on November 10:
fxdhou/d9octpar--tyo/d10novhou/r,up
The two hyphens (--) between Paris and Tokyo denote that there are no flights on this ticket between those two cities. You would then search for flights separately to get the customer for Paris to Rome to Tokyo on the above trip.
Watch this video to see examples and how to search for open-jaw flights.
If you want to learn more about open-jaws you can check out the following document: Open-Jaw Pricing, (and linked 30 minute video)
Another trick to optimize someone's complex, multi-stop route is what's called clustering.
Like open-jaws, we utilize clustering to see if we can get a better price and/or better schedule on someone's multi-stop trip.
Clustering means that we combine several flights on one ticket, usually with one airline, within one airline alliance, or with airlines who have partnerships with each other. Oftentimes clustering certain flights will result in a lower price than looking at several, separate one-way flights.
Let's look at a sample route:
Madrid - Quito - Santiago - Easter Island - Papeete - Auckland - Melbourne - Madrid
For this particular route, I'm going to look to cluster Santiago - Easter Island - Papeete - Auckland all on one ticket rather than searching 3 separate, one way flights.
Here's how I would search that in Amadeus:
fxdscl/d26octipc/d29octppt/d4novakl/r,up
That means I'm searching for these flights: Santiago to Easter Island on October 26; Easter Island to Papeete on October 30, and Papeete to Auckland on November 4.
Check out this video to see it in action.
Another tactic for minimizing cost is breaking a fare in hub cities. Hub cities are large cities around the world that have the biggest and busiest airports - think New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, London.
Breaking a fare in a hub city means that you would look for a separate flight into then out of a hub city going from Point A to Point B, even if that hub city is not in the traveler's current itinerary or schedule.
We do this because it's typically less expensive to fly in and out of large, hub cities than it is to fly in and out of smaller, more obscure cities.
This can also be called a stopover, though there are a few different ways to define stopovers (more on that in another lesson). This is the less traditional way of using the term stopover.
The way you sell this to a customer is to tell them they are getting an extra stop for free, and many times even less!
Let's look at some examples in this video.
Before you get together with your trainer, we want you to do some research on hub cities around the world.
Look at the following regions and try to figure out what the biggest 1-2 hub cities in each country/region below:
1. United States
2. Canada
3. Southeast Asia
4. China
5. The Middle East
6. Europe
7. Southern Africa
8. Northern Africa
9. South America (choose 3-4 hubs here)
After you do that, get together with your trainer to discuss:
1. Which ones you are right about.
2. Which ones you are wrong about.
3. Why you were right and wrong about each.
4. Have our trainer show you real examples in Amadeus on how to use the hubs in each country/region to get a lower price.
Don't take more than 45 minutes to do this on your own. We expect that you will get stuck and that this will be difficult, so don't stress over it. The biggest learning will come when you meet with your trainer.
Watch this video to get tips on using the OCR.
Read this document for some strategies for getting the most out of the OCR. Optional: watch the video linked on the top of the document for a more in-depth demonstration.
Some of our contracts are more complicated, because they have special rules and exceptions you need to know about when selling them. Here are the most commonly used complex contracts:
If you have questions about the above, please schedule time with your trainer. You will learn more about the details of these contracts as you come across them in your daily work.
We recommend scheduling an in-depth review with the Rate Desk after you have been working directly with clients for a few months.
Review this list of potential problems with your Rate Desk Training specialist. Talk with them about how to get help if you encounter these problems.
Presale checklist: Avoid these common ticketing pitfalls
Baggage and Seat Assignments: pitfalls (Company reference document)
Let your trainer know how you are doing!
Answer these questions and set up a 20 min zoom meeting with your trainer to review them.
Your trainer should check this off your list once they review.
You have a few choices for further self study.
We have found that the best way for people to learn is to try to price by themselves, then review with a colleague to see how their solutions could be improved.
We have a weekly meeting talking about different products we sell and destinations people want to visit. We record every meeting!
This folder contains the recordings. Each is about 45 minutes long. Please watch a few to gain information about our contracts and destinations people want to visit.
Have your trainer sign off on your Air Product training!
Answer these questions and set up a 20 min zoom meeting with your trainer to review them.
Your trainer should check this off your list once they review.
