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The problem I've been finding lately is airlines, even via searches like Google Flights will fluctuate prices hourly to daily. And I mean price changes that are

The problem I've been finding lately is airlines, even via searches like Google Flights will fluctuate prices hourly to daily. And I mean price changes that are nearly double sometimes for economy flights at random times (looks at Lufthansa) I can spend my time checking over a few days to see what the game is. The LLM Agent is gonna need a cron job system.... Otoh, LLMs booking flights? Airlines are going to exploit the ever loving shit out of that to jack rates for people not paying attention by detecting LLM queries which is completely legal.

mips_avatar 1y ago
I don't think the airlines win in a battle against agents. Look at what happened when Air Canada tried to keep seats.aero from scraping award prices to find saver fares, they lost technologically and legally. seats.aero is run by a solo developer and won. I think if more airlines try and do AI dynamic pricing like Delta did this year they're going to find AI agents are extremely good at adversarial booking. I think a really innovative airline booking provider would capitalize on this new dynamic by facilitating this lubrication of supply and demand. AI agents understand that a given consumer is just as interested in hiking the Dolomites as Patagonia. So they should be willing to surface something like what their best price is for Venice and Buenos Aires to fill the seats.
dzhiurgis 1y ago
My issue with google flights is heavy cache on smaller routes. My country needs 2 layovers to get to NZ which massively increases search space. Pretty much every result is “oops we can’t find this price anymore, it’s now 10x”. It’s still ok for finding some routes or ideas, but far from best for cheapest (ie it cant find cheapest country to book from like skyscanner). And don’t even get me started on business flight search - that’s basically conspiracy from airlines for you never to find deals.

mips_avatar 1y ago

I don't think the airlines win in a battle against agents. Look at what happened when Air Canada tried to keep seats.aero from scraping award prices to find saver fares, they lost technologically and legally. seats.aero is run by a solo developer and won. I think if more airlines try and do AI dynamic pricing like Delta did this year they're going to find AI agents are extremely good at adversarial booking. I think a really innovative airline booking provider would capitalize on this new dynamic by facilitating this lubrication of supply and demand. AI agents understand that a given consumer is just as interested in hiking the Dolomites as Patagonia. So they should be willing to surface something like what their best price is for Venice and Buenos Aires to fill the seats.

dzhiurgis 1y ago

My issue with google flights is heavy cache on smaller routes. My country needs 2 layovers to get to NZ which massively increases search space. Pretty much every result is “oops we can’t find this price anymore, it’s now 10x”. It’s still ok for finding some routes or ideas, but far from best for cheapest (ie it cant find cheapest country to book from like skyscanner). And don’t even get me started on business flight search - that’s basically conspiracy from airlines for you never to find deals.