Thanks for the explanation, but why couldn't vouchers simply be held in an entirely different system, something more associated with the funding side of things than the travel side of things? It looks like that's the approach taken by VA with their "TravelBank." Other business talk about loading funds onto a "gift card." You can even contract with external companies to manage these "gift cards" if you don't want to fully develop the in-house systems yourself. It seems like an incredibly convoluted process that's not very consumer friendly. Is it simply due to inertia/that's the way it's always been, in the travel industry?
I imagine part of it is history of PSS/GDSes, part of it is history of the airline / agent relationship, and part of it is the difference between "credit vouchers" that are done as ticket exchanges and those which are just a money value.
When you have a credit in the form of exchangeable tickets, it is quite different to the travel bank/gift card/credit on file style. I think itt would be good for airlines to show them as "vouchers" rather than appearing in the MMB section, that's just a deficiency of the website and they could do better to mask the fact they are different behind the scenes.
With gift cards, you get a certain amount of money you can spend on anything you like, it's effectively just a a form of payment.
It's a bit different at the moment, since airlines are offering waivers to the fare rules and booking terms, but normally ticket-based credits are very very restrictive. Often the limitations include:
* Can only be used for a journey departing the same country
* Can only be used for the same passengers, unless the fare allows for name changes
* Can't be used across multiple bookings (for a pax - different pax could be split into different PNRs)
* The base fare of the usage needs to be equal or higher than the base fare of the original
* Depending on the relevant government, taxes may not be refundable so the value may be lost unless the same taxes apply.
* Must be used within the original ticket expiry, usually 12 months from issue date, but obviously being waived right now
Those restrictions means that you almost always end up having to spend extra money to use the voucher, or can't use it all. Take for example a family of four (2 adults and two children) from NZ who have been in Australia, and had a booking from SYD to JFK. These restrictions aren't always enforced, especially today, but there could be a lot of problems.
They can't use it for a trip starting in NZ, they'd need to start the trip in AU and sort out their own way here on a separate booking. If the flights were say originally $600 base fare, and the current price is $595 they would need to switch to a higher booking class which may be say $700 base fare and pay the extra cost. The parents can't decide to have a trip themselves and use the value for the kids tickets towards themselves. If one of the children turn 12 and so need an ADT fare, things get quite complex.
I don't know if it's actually true, but there is a story about a passenger with a expensive long multi-leg first fare who had to cancel, but was on some kind of slightly restricted first, so they could only get a credit not a money refund. Shortly after the airline dropped first from some routes, and so there were no longer *any* routes where you could get even a full F fare where the base amount was higher than the original base amount. The customer's travel agent had to spend many hours on phones trying to argue with the airline that the "equal or higher base" rule should be waived since they could not offer any route where it could be used.
May not be true, but seems like the kind of things airlines would blindly try to enforce because the computer says so.
