Low-cost carriers have been around for years, and if there’s one sure-fire way for them to drum up a little publicity, to remind travelers they really do offer low-low fares, it’s the ‘all seats for sale from one dollar/pound/euro/dirham’ offer. It works as well in Luton as it does in Kuwait.
Jazeera Airways, fresh from announcing new routes and new planes, is currently on Sale, promising fares from as little as one dirham. Not all fares are one dirham, you understand, and the price doesn’t include taxes and booking charges, and your return flight will cost a lot more than one dirham, but you get the picture: it’s cheap. Though not as cheap as you first think.
Harmless enough. Low-cost airlines are among the best data-crunchers around; they know route load factors, price sensitivity and annual holiday patterns. It is no coincidence the Jazeera Sale falls outside the Ramadan, school and business holidays.
The question is: why don’t more sectors copy this type of sale? When low-cost airlines go on Sale the customer is at least allowed to dream there are bargains to be had; when mall retailers go on Sale it usually says to the customer ‘here’s the stuff we couldn’t sell last week at full price’.
Sales do clear unsold stock, but they can also be a time to reengage with consumers, to remind them what’s good about the business. Would it be such a disaster if coffee, cinema tickets or haircuts were slashed to one dirham for one day?
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