3 ms·
This is total B.S. When you do a search on a travel website (including most airlines official sites) you are actually being served results from a GDS. These co
by dsl 13y ago
This is total B.S.
When you do a search on a travel website (including most airlines official sites) you are actually being served results from a GDS. These companies (Worldspan, Sabre, etc) pull in airline/hotel/etc availability and produce an a search and fulfillment API. They are the reason you can get a flight that connects across multiple different carriers.
I've built a number of successful OTAs (Online Travel Agencies, aka websites) and never once been asked to provide visitor IP addresses or cookies.
In the early days of the internet doing repeated searches would increase prices because these systems were designed for travel agents to do a small number of searches, and a spike in searches was a demand signal. Almost all demand based pricing has been eliminated from air and hotel because of internet "casual shoppers" and price wars.
- socialist_coder 13y agoWell it's true. I've had it happen to me multiple times. Do a search and find a flight at price X. Clear your cookies and repeat search (maybe on another day?). The same flight will show up for a lower price. Do a google search for "clear your cookies before booking flights" and you can read all about it.
- seanherron 13y agoIf you're doing it on another day, the inventory (and thus price) probably changed. The price of a seat on a plane is dependent on how many other seats have been sold.
- socialist_coder 13y agoSorry, my wording was confusing. I'm saying that on another day if you repeat your search you might get a higher price. Then, clear your cookies and search again- boom, back to the lower price. I've seen it happen 3 or 4 times now.