Basic Economy Fares vs. "main" economy fares visibility

[sasrsc]

SABRE is about to release 21.3 which includes the next generation of their air shopping tool. However, Concur essentially does it already by breaking up fare types into buckets basic econ vs. main econ vs. prem econ etc...Even this release from SABRE doesn't seem to do the "buckets' properly for our main stream US carriers. We believe that Concur Travel should always show ALL Fares. However, we don't want them booking basic econ unless they really understand the consequences. Previously we had added an "info" icon to those fares. 
My questions are:-
1) How do you "steer" people toward "main" econ instead of "basic" econ? 

2) Do you believe it's OK to hide "basic econ"? If they go to google flights or the airline directly they will see those lower airfares.
3) In my opinion, 3 should be able to add a "warning" that requires an acknowledgement to make sure they understand the consequences. 
4) We experimented with displaying and not allowing to book the basic econ fares but unfortunately the rules engine was not showing the cheapest main economy fares. Granted that research was done 12-18 months ago. Has Concur fixed that?

[JessicaL]

All great questions!

1) You could add a pop-up that comes up before the search results are shown for flights, with a warning/explanation of basic economy fares. This is successful for us because the user has to at least close the pop-up before moving on and we list the reasons that we do not recommend basic economy.

At my previous company, we added the warning as part of the custom text on the results screen, at the top, with some things highlighted so it was there for reference. This was nice because the information was right at the top of the screen.

2) I much prefer "show but do not allow" and not hiding them, as I agree with your assessment that the user would then try to purchase elsewhere since it appears cheaper on a different site.

3) That is pretty much how our pop-up works, but there is no proof of acknowledgement.

4) Agreed and there are still some issues there. I believe it is better, though.

[sasrsc]

Thanks Jessica - we will run this through the ringer again to see if it's any better.
The pop up message is probably a little better although the real estate is more limited but at least that gets your attention more than custom text at the top. 
I was comparing SABRE with Concur the other day and at first blush one would say that Concur did a better job at partitioning the fares but then you dig deeper and SABRE's new display is better than Concur IMHO as it breaks out the basic from main and from main (XP), whereas Concur seems to be haphazard at that. It will be interesting to see where the next iteration of the shopping experience takes us.