Jfidler From United States of America, joined Aug 2000, 294 posts, RR: 0 Posted (12 years 5 months 1 week 3 days 14 hours ago) and read 1383 times:
I was catching up on my holiday shopping tonight, and while sitting at a stoplight, noticed a UA ticket office, in a strip mall in Rockville, Maryland (a suburb of DC, about 15 miles from DC, and at least 30 minutes' drive from BWI, DCA, IAD).
This got me to wondering: why do airlines have ticket offices that aren't at the airport? What purpose do they serve? The only reason I could think of is to pick up a ticket (that wasn't an e-ticket), but FedEx can deliver the ticket the next morning to anywhere, so why not just use them?
On top of that, this ticket office was in a suburb of DC, not even in the city itself. UA used to (I assume it still does) have a ticket office in downtown DC. So why the duplication? What are these offices for?
Jfidler From United States of America, joined Aug 2000, 294 posts, RR: 0 Reply 2, posted (12 years 5 months 1 week 2 days 21 hours ago) and read 1351 times:
But why do these people need to go to ticket offices? What's wrong with just delivering the paper tickets via FedEx or some other overnight service?
Bhmal From United States of America, joined Feb 2000, 140 posts, RR: 4 Reply 3, posted (12 years 5 months 1 week 1 day 7 hours ago) and read 1333 times:
My first guess would be marketing. To have a presence and be seen throughout larger cities. But this is only a guess. I would think it would cost the airlines to operate more than what it could return in sales. Seeing as how paper tickets are still issued but the e-ticket is becoming ever popular and one day (I'm sure the airlines want to see this day) there will be no more paper tickets I don't know what other good these offices do except again, people seeing that sign who haven't dealt with a computer much and they just swing by to make that reservation.
I'm sure the airlines would love to make all reservations on the web one day and have no res call centers but this too is just a guess.
Raddog2 From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR: Reply 4, posted (12 years 5 months 1 week 1 day 7 hours ago) and read 1330 times:
It's convenient if you have a complicated itinerary, have a big group, or need to ticket in person (e.g. if you're flying on a frequent flyer ticket and need to exchange a certificate -- although UA doesn't have this problem). I've had to use suburban ticket offices many times. I don't think they're really necessary though...TWA closed nearly all of theirs.
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