Six months ago, Southwest flights became bookable via Expedia and other sites owned by Expedia (Travelocity, Orbitz, etc.). A few days ago, another Online Travel Agency (OTA) gained access to Southwest flights: Priceline.
This isn’t particularly exciting news as I imagine most of us would rather book direct with Southwest in order to have fewer hassles in the event of irregular operations, rather than having to resolve things via Priceline. There are a few potential situations where this could be good news for some people though.
For example, Priceline’s loyalty program awards higher levels of VIP status based on the number of trips you take. Qualifying trips include completed car rentals, hotel stays and, pertinently for Southwest passengers, flights. I’ve never found Priceline’s loyalty program to be very compelling, but no doubt some people do find some kind of value there. If they’re Southwest flyers then earning more trip credits by booking via Priceline could be helpful.
Another scenario is someone who’s a Priceline credit card holder. They earn 5x on Priceline bookings when paying with the Priceline Visa card, so earning 5x on flights could be a good return for someone who doesn’t have better cards to put that kind of spend on.
A further reason someone might want to book via Priceline is to earn rewards through a shopping portal. For example, at the time of writing this post TopCashback is offering $5 cashback per traveler for flights booked on Priceline, or 6% if it’s an Express Deal flight. Earning $5 per passenger isn’t a bad return considering it’s $5 more per passenger than you’d earn by booking directly with Southwest. Whether that’s worth the risk of having to deal with Priceline in the event of irregular operations is up to you, but for a family of four that’s $20 for each flight which could mount up over the year for frequent Southwest travelers.
I mentioned earning trips towards Priceline VIP status, but doing that doesn’t preclude you from earning Rapid Rewards points with Southwest, nor does it prevent you from earning A-List status with Southwest either. This is a both/and situation rather than either/or.
I doubt that I’ll be booking Southwest flights via Priceline the next time I need to fly with them, but it’s always good to have more booking options than fewer.
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