For people who want to fly, finding the cheapest flight option is a task on hand. For companies who are operating in a highly competitive sphere with a number of agencies and airlines providing almost similar fares, attracting potential customers is a big task. One of the ways in which these companies seek to gain customers is the use of “bait-and-switch” tactics. You would have seen many customer reviews complaining about the use of “bait and switch” methods by the agencies. 

Let us first understand how this tactic operates in real life? As the name suggests, at first, the bait of cheap fare is offered to the passenger. This can happen on own website or on any third-party website, such as fare compare sites on which the company has its inventory and prices listed. Thereafter, on one pretext or the other, this initial price is sought to be changed to a higher one. This can happen both before and after the booking is made. This stage of price change defines whether the practice is ethical or not. 

 If the change is price in natural due to the dynamic price change by the airline, this would generally happen before the booking is accomplished. Good agencies would immediately notify the passenger that the price has changed and would ask whether they want to continue with the booking at higher price or go back to make fresh search. This is an ethical way in which the price change operates. 

However, in the instances where a higher price is sought to be extracted from the customer after the flight is booked by cancelling the old booking, due to any reason, then in public view, this is an unethical practice as the passenger would expect the agency to honor its commitment. In this scenario, it is recommended that the passenger shall not assent to cancellation of the old booking and have a new one. The so called “bait” will work only if it is bitten by the passenger. If it is not bitten, then it is useless.