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Does source IP address make a difference when searching fares on ITA Software's Matrix[1]? To my knowledge, ITA Software is where Kayak and many of the other bo

Does source IP address make a difference when searching fares on ITA Software's Matrix[1]? To my knowledge, ITA Software is where Kayak and many of the other booking sites get their data, so it's normally what I use when searching for flights. Since they don't actually sell tickets, I've always assumed I'm seeing "neutral" results, but now I'm curious. [1] http://matrix.itasoftware.com http://matrix.itasoftware.com

joelrunyon 13y ago
Google bought out itasoftware so I'm not going to assume that it's completely neutral, but I have consistently seen the best deals come through that. I don't even bother using Kayak anymore as the "calendar" function on itasoftware is so much more useful for someone like me with a relatively flexible schedule on most of my trips. I can't confirm, but I assume from personal experience that kayak increases prices on flights as you search for the same flight multiple times.
- acjohnson55 13y ago
  I've had this anecdotal experience as well. How is this legal?
  - grkvlt 13y ago
    Of course it is legal. In the same way as it is legal to set the sale price for (most) things at any (arbitrarily high, or low) value - airline ticketing takes place in a free market. This means sellers can offer tickets at any price they want, and it is up to the purchaser to signal whether they think the price is appropriate by buying the ticket (or not) at some price. The alternative is government interference or regulation of the airline ticket industry, setting fixed prices, which would not be good for the industry.
btn 13y ago
No, your IP has no effect; by default, you're seeing prices as if they were booked from the departure city. Matrix lets you specify the the "sales city" (the last field in the advanced search options), which allows you to check out price discrimination by location.
notahacker 13y ago
ITA software might be "neutral", but it omits certain carriers that don't supply fare rules to it, excluding many low cost carriers, for instance. As such, I can beat it without trying very hard simply by going to direct to the websites of the likes of Ryanair or AirAsia if I know they're operating on a particular route, which is a shame, because I like their interface. Or, in this instance, Southwest. Some of the travel sites using ITA's QPX API to drive their booking engine get prices from these other airlines via direct feeds or web scraping, but as pointed out here, they can be quite selective in what they're willing or able to show It's still ludicrously easy to trip up the flight comparison services up with edge cases like the short domestic Yangon-Mandalay route, where ITA finds nothing, most booking engines offer ridiculously expensive flights connecting in China or Bangkok, whilst Innovata Quicktrip (which you should use when you're convinced there are direct flights the big sites aren't showing you) shows multiple direct flights a day with 6 different local airlines, provided you don't mind their clumsy twentieth century booking operations. TLDR: Use Quicktrip (which doesn't give direct prices) to check if there are budget airlines or local airlines also flying on direct routes that the big search sites might not be showing, and try these unlisted airlines' websites direct if they seem more promising.

joelrunyon 13y ago

Google bought out itasoftware so I'm not going to assume that it's completely neutral, but I have consistently seen the best deals come through that. I don't even bother using Kayak anymore as the "calendar" function on itasoftware is so much more useful for someone like me with a relatively flexible schedule on most of my trips. I can't confirm, but I assume from personal experience that kayak increases prices on flights as you search for the same flight multiple times.

acjohnson55 13y ago
I've had this anecdotal experience as well. How is this legal?
- grkvlt 13y ago
  Of course it is legal. In the same way as it is legal to set the sale price for (most) things at any (arbitrarily high, or low) value - airline ticketing takes place in a free market. This means sellers can offer tickets at any price they want, and it is up to the purchaser to signal whether they think the price is appropriate by buying the ticket (or not) at some price. The alternative is government interference or regulation of the airline ticket industry, setting fixed prices, which would not be good for the industry.

btn 13y ago

No, your IP has no effect; by default, you're seeing prices as if they were booked from the departure city. Matrix lets you specify the the "sales city" (the last field in the advanced search options), which allows you to check out price discrimination by location.

notahacker 13y ago

ITA software might be "neutral", but it omits certain carriers that don't supply fare rules to it, excluding many low cost carriers, for instance. As such, I can beat it without trying very hard simply by going to direct to the websites of the likes of Ryanair or AirAsia if I know they're operating on a particular route, which is a shame, because I like their interface. Or, in this instance, Southwest. Some of the travel sites using ITA's QPX API to drive their booking engine get prices from these other airlines via direct feeds or web scraping, but as pointed out here, they can be quite selective in what they're willing or able to show It's still ludicrously easy to trip up the flight comparison services up with edge cases like the short domestic Yangon-Mandalay route, where ITA finds nothing, most booking engines offer ridiculously expensive flights connecting in China or Bangkok, whilst Innovata Quicktrip (which you should use when you're convinced there are direct flights the big sites aren't showing you) shows multiple direct flights a day with 6 different local airlines, provided you don't mind their clumsy twentieth century booking operations. TLDR: Use Quicktrip (which doesn't give direct prices) to check if there are budget airlines or local airlines also flying on direct routes that the big search sites might not be showing, and try these unlisted airlines' websites direct if they seem more promising.