Articles about IdeaWorksCompany

Forbes
Airlines Rake In A $27 Billion Fee Bonanza – And It Just Keeps Growing
You might have first noticed airline fees when you paid $25 to check a bag. Then for the aisle seat that keeps your legs from cramping. Then, when you decided to pay to get on board early.  Those airline fees are now adding up to a stunning source of revenue — $27 billion in 2012. That’s up 20 percent from 2011, according to the IdeaWorks Company, and double what it was in 2009.

NBC News
Airlines took in $27 billion in fees in 2012
From paying for checked luggage and early boarding to extra legroom and on-board snacks, travelers know flying these days means never closing your wallet.  Now, there’s more proof. Carriers around the world collected more than $27 billion last year in fees and other non-fare revenue, which has become “a crucial component of airline income,” a new report finds.

Sydney Morning Herald
Do airlines even care about their websites?
In June, the foremost US expert on ancillary revenue, IdeaWorksCompany, said in a report that ancillary revenue for 116 airlines around the world had reached $US27.1 billion in 2012 and had doubled since 2009. “Statistics help tell the ancillary revenue story and every year key numbers are getting larger,” says the president of IdeaWorksCompany, Jay Sorensen.

Los Angeles Times
Extra fees generate $27.1 billion for airlines in 2012
In 2012, 53 airlines around the globe collected $27.1 billion in so-called ancillary revenue, compared with $22.6 billion collected by 50 carriers in 2011, according to a new report by IdeaWorks Co., a Wisconsin consultant on airline fees. The study was sponsored by CarTrawler, a Dublin, Ireland-based provider of car rental distribution systems.

The Wall Street Journal
Easier Ways to Use Airline Miles on the Ground
Airlines make it tough to use frequent-flier miles for tickets, especially if you want first-class or business-class trips to popular destinations. But using airline miles for hotel rooms and rental cars is getting easier and cheaper.

Chicago Tribune
Frequent flyer miles: A close look
IdeaWorks compared ticket costs for 170 representative itineraries with the miles required to obtain both limited-availability “saver” award seats and almost-always-available “standard” award seats. The inquiry covered 50 domestic itineraries on 10 “major” and largely long-haul routes, 50 Hawaiian trips and 170 trips to Asian, European, and other long-haul markets.

Forbes
To Get The Most From Your Frequent Flier Miles, Book Business Or First Class
I don’t know about you, but every time I redeem frequent flier miles for a plane ticket, I wonder whether I’m getting my money’s worth. Or my non-money’s worth, as it were.  Turns out that the biggest bang for sky-bucks comes from booking a first class ticket to a far-flung destination. That’s the finding of a new study by Shorewood, WI-based IdeaWorks. It compared mileage needed to book a variety of flights and fare classes versus paid tickets. “The answer was clear,” the study says. “Booking first class travel to Hawaii, Europe or Asia provides best value for redeeming frequent flier miles.”

Skift Travel IQ
How United’s Loyalty Program Lets the Mileage Rich Get Richer
Not all rewards miles are created equally — not even within a single frequent flyer program.  That’s one of the conclusions that can be drawn from the latest IdeaWorksCompany study of frequent flyer programs.  The company focused on United MileagePlus, what it says is the largest loyalty program in the world, and made 170 queries on United.com to gauge fare values tied to economy, business, and first-class reward travel.

Motley Fool
Alaska Airlines’ Remarkable Revenue Strategy
Alaska Airlines is a leader in ancillary revenue (add-on revenue not included in the basic price of an airline ticket). According to IdeaWorksCompany, an airline revenue consulting company, Alaska Airlines ranked 10th among global airlines in 2012 in the category of Ancillary Revenue Per Passenger.

New York Times
An Economy on the Mend Lifts Corporate Travel
Last year, revenue from all ancillary fees on the world’s airlines surged 19.6 percent, to $27.1 billion, according to a report by IdeaWorks, a consulting company specializing in airline revenue.