I can't speak to Hotwire, but in the case of airline seats and hotel rooms, one of the dynamics of the market is the uncertainty of availability. What you are r

I can't speak to Hotwire, but in the case of airline seats and hotel rooms, one of the dynamics of the market is the uncertainty of availability. What you are really buying in the case of an airline seat is the guarantee of a seat on that flight. Couple this with businesspeople who absolutely, positively have to be in a certain city at a certain time, and you have a market where there is a limit on how much leakage you will have between classes of customer. That might play out for seats in a spin class, but it might not. It would depend on whether customers have flexibility about which classes they take and whether they care about which gyms they attend. The more flexible and mobile they are, the harder a business has to work to do this kind of price discrimination. I'm not suggesting it's impossible or that web businesses can't help, just that ONLY selling excess capacity at a discount is a problem. I posit that you must sell excess capacity and do something else to succeed.