Pleasant Holidays cuts tour deal with go!
The interisland carrier is selling packages through its Web site
Mesa Air Group's go!, strengthening its presence in the Hawaii market, has struck a deal with its first tour operator, Westlake Village, Calif.-based Pleasant Holidays, as part of the interisland carrier's newly created go!Vacations.
The Phoenix-based company, which began service June 9 and sparked an interisland airfare war with $19 one-way tickets, announced the new feature this morning. However, go! actually began selling the holiday packages last week on its Web site. The packages include hotels, rental cars, tours and transfers.
Hawaiian Airlines and Aloha Airlines offer tour packages through other companies on their respective Web sites.
"It has always been go!'s intention to offer our customers a large choice of value-added products which generate additional revenue, enabling us to offer the people of Hawaii the lowest fares," said Jonathan Ornstein, chairman and chief executive of Mesa.
Pleasant Holidays, a national tour wholesaler, is the largest wholesaler to Hawaii and sends hundreds of thousands of passengers to the islands each year, according to Jim Barsch, senior vice president of operations and information services for Pleasant Holidays.
"We have similar arrangement with almost 1,600 different companies, mostly travel agencies and some hotels," Barsch said. "Our booking engine is embedded in (go!'s) Web site, so from that perspective, one of our business objectives as a company is to distribute our product as wide and as far as possible. They sell our product, and we need to sell our product, so in essence we're treating them as we would a travel agency."
Barsch said he has offered a similar agreement to Hawaiian and Aloha on several occasions but said they told him they have prior agreements in place with other companies. Hawaii holiday packages can be booked through Pleasant Holidays' Web site as well.
Although go! doesn't have code-share agreements with any mainland carriers that fly to Hawaii, it will receive a commission from Pleasant Holidays whenever vacation packages are booked through go!'s Web site.
Paul Skellon, vice president of corporate communications for Mesa, said even if Hawaii travelers don't click directly on go!'s Web site, they could be directed to the site by doing an Internet search for key words that are on go!'s site.
"The fact that we're not a long-haul carrier doesn't mean we can't sell vacation packages or someone else's seats to get people to their destination," Skellon said. "They may not even fly on go! when they get to Hawaii, but we'll make some money by them booking the whole package on our site. This is the first major step of our strategy to sell ancillary products through our Web site."
Pleasant Holidays generates its revenue by creating the packages through purchasing products from airlines, hotels and rental car agencies, marking up the rates a percentage, and then reselling the packages.