Has Alitalia Learned an Important Discount Lesson?

Alitalia has been regularly running discounts on its flights, sometimes even 25%.

Early on those discounts could be used to book Delta flights, but they figured that out and shut it down.

Then in October they targeted a ~ $300 discount at the Japanese market but allowed it to be used on any flight. Including intra-European flights, which priced out in many cases as nearly free. Ultimately Alitalia wound up honoring any and all of the tickets that didn’t price literally at zero.

Enter Alitalia’s latest discount offering, book by December 23 for travel from January 8 to April 13.

It’s a strong discount — 250 euro discount on economy, 350 discount on premium economy, and 500 euro discount on business class.

BUT

  • It’s only valid for Alitalia flights originating in Italy
  • It’s only valid to specific destinations — Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing, Tokyo, or Osaka

Perhaps this is a one-off change, but perhaps they’ve been more tightly targeting their offers.

At least this will be useful to both of my Italian readers.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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