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As predicted, MAS has extended the duration of their Malaysia Airlines Travel Fair 2007 through to next week, 12th February 2007. The fair was originally scheduled to end today (6th February 2007).

The reason given for the extension is the usual mumbo-jumbo about customer response and sales. Personally speaking, that’s all hogwash. It was announced initially that they expected to sell 5 million seats within the original 7 day period. The only logical reason for them to extend is if they did not meet that target. It certainly has nothing to do with overwhelming response. If it had been, they would have been satisfied with the sales and closed shop.

According to MAS commercial director, Datuk Rashid Khan, “Response from customers is indeed overwhelming. However, a significant interest number of them have shown interest in our offers but have not had much time to plan their journeys.” This begs the question, how do they know?

If that were really the case, then why repeat history. Last year’s fair mirrored the exact same behaviour, announcement and reasoning. If it happened the first year, what made them think that people would be anymore prepared the next year? It only stands to logic that if they knew about it before hand, they should have taken steps to avoid it from recurring. Steps such as releasing the prices in advance. However, that would probably hurt their sales for the period when it was released as people would withhold purchases for the discounted fares. Catch 22.

So they feed the public the same old marketing strategy and the same old excuses. Signs of desperation? Perhaps. But that’s really secondary to the point. We can think about it all we want but there’s really no sense questioning a good thing.

With the extension, thrifty travelers have six extra days to finalise their holidays and book their flights with MAS via MATF 2007. Use them wisely. If you haven’t already made your reservations and planned your vacation, now would be the time. Otherwise, you’ll just have to wait till MATTA fair which isn’t too long away to make your holiday plans. Either way, you should already have something in mind to make the process easier.