Korean Job Discussion Forums

[itaewonguy]

ok in this thread people ask questions which they want to know the answers for.. If someone knows the answer then please answer it..

I will go first...

TRAVEL AGENTS!

How do travel agency's work..

How come one can charge more than the other for the same flight?

how much profit do they usually make off a flight?
Do all travel agents get the flights(wholesale) at the same price?
how do they get the flights? is it first in first serve?
what are the inns and outs of the travel agency business..

[sojourner1]

Those are trade secrets they wouldn't dare enlighten us with.

I know in most parts of the world supply and demand determines prices and it's mostly computers doing the work. A program models the price upon inquiry by calculating supply vs. demand vs. expected minimum price of each flight and hotel. Human travel agents are rarely used in America and much of the world today, but rather they are business people you don't normally talk to who just sit back behind the computers to make their fat money.

We all like it that way too, because it's easy and convenient to use a computer to find a flight and hotel. Often this gives us better deals and sometimes steal deal bargains, because computers keep travel agent operating costs low and makes for a very competitive market. How about a 3000 mile one way flight for only $100? Now we're talking budget traveler material. Never in Korea or Japan...

With that said, Korea is still doing it the old way with human travel agents which is part of what makes their services cost more. This has to do with Korea being protectionist about domestic jobs and earnings. Some travel agents who give a better price are making less profit and may not give you great customer service such as one in Itaewon close to the old Burger King location. As for how much profit, that's impossible to know from the customers end. You'd have to be in the business to know the answers.



Korea's protectionist policies. Question 4

When is Korea going to open up to the world? Where it's a free market in which anyone wanting to offer a product or service can do so and anything is possible with much more available at better prices the market supports.

[BS.Dos.]

Airlines can't sell all the seats on their planes themselves. If they could, we'd call them travel agents not airlines. Advertising, marketing and drones on phones equates to an expenditure they can live without. So, to get around this, they sell the seats in blocks to third-parties at a discount while they concentrate on doing what they do best i.e. keeping the planes in the air and getting them onto those very expensive landing slots they've paid a fortune for. They also like to make sure that there's enough headphones and cold salmonella laced pasta salad on board for everyone.

The third parties then sell the tickets on to Joe Public cheaper than the airlines can. In the process, they then pass on some of the remaining savings on to customer like you and me i.e. cheap-skates who fly economy. Those with ooddles of cash simply call their favourite airline (Virgin by the way. They've a much more generous baggage allowance than most, especially on their A340 600's, which I'd like to add, you might want to remember next time Cathay Pacific sting you �200 for for every 10kg you're over) and book their first/business class tickets and pay top whack, laughing like drains at the cattle in the back who are grazing quietly on cold pasta salad.

This process is known as intermediation, whereby a third-party locates buyers and sellers and intermediates within the supply-chain and, in the process, brings benefits to both the buyer (savings) and the seller (higher volumes of sales). Disintermediation is the process whereby the seller attempts to exclude the middle-man i.e. the intermediary, from the transaction and deal directly with the buyer, typically through some other medium such as the internet etc. Unfortunately, the internet has also given rise to the term re-intermediation, whereby the middle-man now becomes so savvy at what he does i.e appealing directly to the consumer, that the seller no longer has any option but to concede ground to the intermediaries. Consider websites like travelocity and expedia etc, the only way airlines can pull back in some of the losses that they're sacrificing hand over fist to the intermediaries is through sales such as this.

Ultimately, it is arguable as to whether the consumer is best served through disintermediation or through reintermediation. On the one hand, the buyer always stands to save more the closer they can get to the seller as you're side-stepping the middle-man. Conversely, market mechanisms dictate that the consumer is best served through choice rather than monopolies i.e. airlines. Either way, you'll still be eating cold pasta salad at some point.