Why CheapOair Is Sticking With Flights While Booking Peers Chase Hotels
Skift Take
CheapOair has already proven that it can make a viable business out of flights when its competitors are scurrying to build their hotel businesses. There will be pressures, and it won't be the fastest-growing business in the world, but there is plenty of room for companies like CheapOair that keep their heads down and focus on areas that others are neglecting.
Most online travel businesses are trying to diversify away from the flight business as fast as they can, treating airline tickets almost as a loss leader. In fact, even flight-shopping site Skyscanner recently acquired a hotel-search business.
Then there's New York City-based CheapOair, and founder and CEO Sam Jain, who wants to do for flights what Booking.com did for hotels.
Jain outlined CheapOair's strategy and ambitions exclusively to Skift in one of the few press interviews he's given since CheapOair was founded in 2005.
OK, Jain has no illusions that CheapOair can achieve success on the scale that Booking.com has done, but he sees a huge upside in the fact that "airlines are craving to differentiate themselves."
In that regard, representatives from Etihad Airways spent several days in CheapOair's Manhattan office last week, awarding prizes to contact center agents who correctly answered questions about the meal choices in first class, for example. Emirates and Singapore Airlines have made similar appearances.
Jain argues that a single-minded focus on, and investments in, selling flights can make for a very strong business as carriers are really still in the beginning stages of unbundling their preferred seats, early boarding options, onboard Wi-Fi, and other ancillary services, and need help selling them to a wider audience.
The Tourists Got Here By Flying
Over dinner in Manhattan on a Friday night near Rockefeller Center with Jain and a couple of his executive team members, there are throngs of tourists from foreign countries nearby, and they are jockeying for position on Fifth Avenue's gridlocked sidewalks.
You hardly hear any English as the international visit
