Far Trader (IIRC) explained that competition on price was heavily discouraged, in order to prevent shipping industry boom-bust cycles due to amplifications of small capacity-requirement shifts. It didn't really describe what form that discouragement took, however.

On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 2:33 PM, Thomas Jones-Low <tjoneslow@gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/6/2015 5:24 PM, Craig Berry wrote:
I was responding specifically to the "bumped from a scheduled liner" scenario.
There the goal of the passenger is to get from point A to point B safely and
quickly. Those interested in exotic means of transport will presumably already
have made other choices.

Of course, I doubt the major lines actually overbook; it's harder to fall back
to the next flight on the kind of schedule implied here. Rather, I would imagine
they would sell a number of refundable standby tickets, or discounted
first-available-slot tickets, to deal with no-shows.

        Depending upon the level of traffic it may be that there is a schedule liner every day leaving world X for world Y, and given the variations in jump drive performance (and other factors), it may be the ship leaving on day N arrives later than the ship which left on day N+1.

        I'd have to run the numbers again, but given the size of passenger space requirements, there isn't a lot of scale efficiency gained by making the liner larger, rather than building several smaller ones to transport more frequently.

        I think the biggest thing that a Tramp ship owner could do to attract passengers is to offer them a deal. But the rules in every version of Traveller assume the price is fixed (by whom isn't mentioned).


--
        Thomas Jones-Low
Work:   tjoneslo@softstart.com
Home:   tjoneslow@gmail.com
-----
The Traveller Mailing List
Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml
Report problems to listmom@travellercentral.com
To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=PltOdItWBSgOP4y0Q6abkGbDI1eus0lz



--
Craig Berry (http://google.com/+CraigBerry)
"Eternity is in love with the productions of time." - William Blake