A colleague forwarded me this article today – apparently Spirit Airline is considering making customers pay for the privilege of booking tickets anywhere other than their ticket counters in airports.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604492886515417.html

Wow. Spirit must have some Ticketmaster folks on its board.

This is effing hilarious, and a good example of why the air travel industry is in such dire straits. I assume that Spirit Airlines either has paid up front costs for their reservation system or pays an annual licensing fee, but I doubt the cost ties directly to usage volume. I further suppose that the costs incurred by having ticket counter agents and space at airports exceeds the costs of the online reservation system.

So the airline is, in effect, penalizing consumers for utilizing a more efficient means of transaction. WTF? I can follow (but not necessarily agree with) the thinking behind charging fees for checked baggage or in flight refreshments. These things drive up costs. But not online booking.

What if other industries followed suit? Fees for online banking? For booking hotels online? For using the drive thru at restaurants? For pumping your own gas?

The parallels to live entertainment are obvious. I have often wondered why so few promoters and venues choose to flip the common fee arrangement on its head. That is, charge fees for a box office (ticket counter) sale but offer incentives (no fees) to purchase online. We have a couple of clients who do business this way, and their online sales represent over 90% of their total ticket sales. Self Service is more efficient.
If customers and computers are doing the work, it frees up your resources to grow the business. Our system is one of the few ticketing systems out there with the flexibility to allow venues and promoters to set the fee structure that their customers see (completely independent of the per ticket fees we charge for providing ticketing services). In essence, it empowers businesses to encourage the self service option.

It’s time for more businesses to embrace a shifting paradigm. Encourage the efficient transaction and grow your business the right way, instead of taking the easy route and squeezing your customers who self serve.

Oh, and Spirit, if you guys want to REALLY grow revenues, you should try an online check-in fee, a boarding fee, or even a “seat bottom cushion flotation device” fee.

Geez.