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Use a Fake Location for Cheap Airfare
- hippich 12y agoI remember reading about this hack awhile ago and I was trying to do it, but it was always +- same price + hassle to find company who will accept whatever local currency is.
- tamersalama 12y agoAnyone knows what are the options for booking those Google ITA Flights. Most of the time the travel agents can't get the exact codes/prices.
- jpatokal 12y agoLike it says, the key is the "Sales city". You have to find an agent physically located in the city/country in question to be able to book with that fare. Once you've found one, give them the fare construction from the bottom of a Matrix details page and you should be set: http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/21671/how-can-i-book-a-flight-plan-found-on-matrix-airfare-search http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/21671/how-can-i-bo...
- josai 12y agoYou'd want to be careful that you're viewing the same price package when doing this. For example, when displaying a ticket price in Australia, it must be an all-inclusive price - including all airport fees, surcharges, and everything else. Viewing the same ticket from, say, Japan, it might appear cheaper but it doesn't have those same inclusions, and when you add them all back in it comes out pretty similar. That said, I always buy my air asia flights in malaysian ringgits - it's always cheaper than AUD.
- jzwinck 12y agoOne reason why Air Asia is cheaper in MYR is because it's a Malaysian company, so they don't take foreign exchange risk nor pay bank fees when selling to you in ringgit. For even more fun, try buying KTM (Malaysian rail) tickets in MYR vs. e.g. SGD. They will charge you the same numeric price, ignoring the exchange rate of about 2.5:1. This works much the same as the airlines pricing by sales region.
- brianbreslin 12y agoI've heard prices are higher if you are logged in with your username on airline sites. Also I wonder if there is a cheap way to run a Vpn that lets you choose your "location" on the fly.
- gst 12y agoIn theory you could use Tor (in the config file you can hardcode a list of exit nodes that you want to use). In practice you probably don't want to do this because: 1) If not everything is correctly SSL encrypted on the airline website the risks are much higher and 2) there's a good chance that the airline will block open proxy IPs.
- userbinator 12y agoI remember reading about companies offering different prices based on your browser's user-agent - the argument was something like "Mac users are more willing to spend more". Maybe you'd get discounts if you make them think you're using an extremely old machine... like IE6 on Win98SE or thereabouts. on the fly I see what you did there.
- Gustomaximus 12y agoSome insurance companies do this too, using UA as a variable in determining risk.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoI am amused by the level of intelligence the author expects of their readership. Personally, I would have thought that people who browse Business Insider to have at least a basic grasp of currency conversion, rather than being introduced to a price in Colombian pesos as a mysterious concept that apparently is "a lot of mumbo jumbo to most people".
- bobbles 12y agoYeah if you could have told me the USD conversion of 116,280 COP I would be surprised...
- lotsofmangos 12y agoReally? If a high school student couldn't, they'd fail basic mathematics. Of course you'd have to look up the current exchange rate, but that goes for all currency conversion. Having to look up an exchange rate is part of the process of currency conversion.
- zaroth 12y agoI think GP meant off the top of your head knowing the current-day conversion rate, which would be impressive; not simply doing the calculation which is certainly trivial, by what grade level, 3rd?
- lotsofmangos 12y agoWell, yes, but given they change, if you are doing currency conversion you have to look it up anyway. Always knowing the currency rate for all currencies without looking it up would be impressive, if only because nobody can do that.
- ericamho 12y agoJust wanted to point out -- since I actually wrote that original article -- is that I wrote it for a general audience. We have existing relationships with a lot of media partners like BI so sometimes I write for their audience in mind to cull traffic back to the site, which has a way more niche audience (but I still like to make it as accessible as possible to the general public). Depending on where I'm trying to garner press from, I'll write with different audiences in mind. (...if anyone's interested in the business/media/pr aspect of it all.) Apologies if I insulted anyone's intelligence but that wasn't the point. COP, by far, is not a standard or major currency. How do you think my mother is going to react when I talk to her about Guatemalan quetzales? She, does, however understand Euros but for the purposes of this example, which is a Colombian flight, it made no sense to use a different currency.
- tzs 12y ago> For reasons I never quite understood, every time I tried to book a domestic flight in another country, the prices were always exorbitant. ... > But, say, once I was in Bangkok, that same flight that was once $300 would fall to $30 almost inexplicably. This phenomenon is because a ticket’s point-of-sale—the place where a retail transaction is completed—can affect the price of any flight with an international component. The reasons are pretty easy to understand. When you try to book an in-country flight in Thailand from the United States or Europe, they infer that you are someone who will soon be traveling on an expensive international flight to Thailand. They infer that you will accept $300 for an in-country flight rather than say "screw this, I'll take the train or bus", because (1) you can afford international travel so $300 probably isn't a big deal to you, and (2) there's a good chance you are on a business trip and need that domestic flight to keep things on schedule. When you try to book an in-country flight from within Thailand, those inferences do not work. At some point, they'll get clever and look at your IP address when you make an online booking, and even if you are booking in-country they will give you the $300 rate if you are connected through a hotel that is popular with international travelers.
- touristtam 12y agoI have seen this pattern on European flight, and I am starting to think this is a very dodgy, although completely legal, practice.
- cromulent 12y agoI don't think it is legal. "Firstly, you may not be charged a higher price for a ticket because of your nationality or where you are buying the ticket from." http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-rights/air/index_en.htm http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-rights...
- Moru 12y agoThe thing here is that EU law do not cover the whole world. They do whatever they like over there.
- Gustomaximus 12y agoAnother similar one I've founds is to find a good price and then run the same request in several different country domains. The differences can be quite large e.g. travelcompany.com travelcompany.co.uk travelcompany.com.au Also I've learnt never to book an extra night at the hotel reception when plans change. It's invariably cheaper to go online and book through an aggregator.
- jzwinck 12y ago> It's invariably cheaper to go online and book through an aggregator. Depends on the country. In less-developed places, proprietors of smaller hotels pay relatively large fees (think 25%) to online booking services. If you are already staying there, they will probably give you more days at whatever rate you're already paying, or even less (because it's less work for them to manage longer-term stays, and/or they may not be fully booked). This happens when you deal with people who charge you based on their margins rather than your consumer surplus.
- alister 12y agoThere's also the risk that aggregators will screw up something. On two separate occasions I saw someone arguing with hotel reception about a booking they made with an aggregator that the hotel never received. Customer says, "But I have the printout right here that says I paid in full!" Hotel says, "Sorry sir, you'll have to take that up with the company you paid. You didn't pay us."
- benjaminRRR 12y agoThe whole concept of geographical segmentation is built right into the GDS systems (Global Distribution System). Agents are all designated by an identifier that ties them to a particular geographical point of sale. That's why the above works, many TLDs of a company are actually tied to an agent point of sale in that country. Works on all GDS content - car rentals, hotels and so forth.
- mandeepj 12y agoYes, I do that. Sometimes at the airport after arriving. Make sure there is no big event going on during that time in the town. Priceline.com is always ridiculously cheaper.
- kondro 12y agoExcept that American Airlines doesn't allow you to use a non-US credit card on their US site and fails with a completely obtuse, out-of-context error that you only discover the reason for after calling their callcentre.
- gambiting 12y agoSo what happens if you are a foreigner visiting the US and want to book a ticket from within the US with your foreign card?
- hueving 12y agoDon't fly on American Airlines. It's in the name. ;)
- dagw 12y agoI suppose you could visit your 'local' American Airlines page and book via that.
- ubernostrum 12y agoBook it from whatever site they redirect you to when you're outside the US, or book it through an alliance partner based in your part of the world.
- kondro 12y agoYou can't book it through the aa.com site.
- alister 12y agoBrazil's major airline, TAM, has a nice little trick of their own to fend off the OP's advice. Even if you use TAM's Brazilian portal where you have to navigate in Portuguese, and even if you use it from within Brazil, you won't get the Brazilian price. As a foreigner, you'll have to pay up to 50% more. What's their little trick? They demand that you enter your CPF number, a Brazilian national identity number, to buy from the Brazilian portal for exactly the same ticket. And you can't make one up, or use the CPF number of a Brazilian friend, because they query a government database to verify that the CPF number matches the purchaser's name. It's discussed in more detail here: http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Booking_a_domestic_flight_within_Brazil http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Booking_a_domestic_fl... The CPF number, by the way, is absolutely not a government requirement. Anyone can buy a ticket at a travel agency in Brazil or at the airport without a CPF number. This is either the height of incompetent website design by TAM, or more likely, their price discrimination technique to charge more from foreigners.
- emilga 12y agoFrom the link > Get a Brazilian friend to buy the ticket online on your behalf using his Brazilian credit card and CPF number. Note that a CPF number is demanded from the purchaser when booking online, but passengers can leave the CPF field empty. Making this into an on-line market (matching Brazilians and foreigners for mutual profit) sounds like a business opportunity.
- freyfogle 12y agoHow would that work? If I understand correctly the CPF number needs to match the passenger details. So someone else could buy the ticket for you, but then the ticket is in their name.
- baruch 12y agoNow you only need to match your name with a brazilian with the same name. This assumes the airline doesn't require an ID card with that same CPF to board.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- steventhedev 12y agoThere are two basic causes of this, and they apply to a lot more than just airfare: 1. Price discrimination based on market segmentation. As others have described, the consumer behavior of an international traveler is that they are willing to pay more, so why not charge them? 2. Badly set foreign exchange rates. Companies that sell internationally will use an exchange rate internally when setting prices in a foreign currency that are typically very beneficial to themselves. Sometimes this represents the inherent risk in doing business in a foreign currency. Other times, it is used as a dumping tactic so they can claim they set their prices by simple conversion (Strauss Israel, for example, uses an internal rate of 4.8, which the shekel has never reached in all of history). The former is the reason why flights in Brazil, Thailand are expensive when purchasing abroad. The latter is the reason why Malaysian or Colombian flights are expensive. Better advice is to simply know that most credit cards (both US and european) automatically convert charges, and you'll get a much better rate (typically 1-2% commission on the forex rate of the bill date) by finding a way to make the purchase in the foreign currency, rather than USD or EUR. EDIT: because I can't spell properly.
- ipince 12y ago*Colombian. :-)
- ericamho 12y agoI find that most of the credit card issuers don't automatically convert to USD -- this usually happens more on the merchant end. The problem is that you don't know if the online merchant is doing this or not... it's a lot easier, say, if you're sitting down at a restaurant and find it happening.
- lnanek2 12y agoAlso worth clearing your cookies and logging out. I've seen Delta offer me better prices after clearing cookies. I've seen Marriott offer me better prices after logging out (amusingly I'm a platinum rewards member, but get better pricing by logging out).
- Gravityloss 12y agoIs there a no-bullshit airline with a no-bullshit web shop with no-bullshit pricing? Like Google did with search.
- sqrt17 12y agoIt's harder for airlines to start small the way Google did. You have to offer a certain number of flights to achieve minimum visibility, and people cannot try out your offer whenever they're flying, if only because they're taking another route. For that, you'd need some "unbundling" strategy where not just the Star Alliance (or whatever the companies are called) can sell seats, but another entity can buy seat contingents and sell them at similar conditions. Oh well, phone service, search, and flights are all different, with different rules.
- binarymax 12y agoThere was. From 2004 through 2005, I used to fly an airline called Independence Air[0]. I used to biweekly commute up and down the east coast of the US. Best airline I ever flew. No bullshit sales, friendly and helpful staff, and nice planes with good legroom. Sadly they went out of business. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Air
- dagw 12y agoThere have been a few over the years. However they seem to have an annoying tendency to go bankrupt.
- walshemj 12y agoEasy Jet seem to do ok without descending to the level of doucheness that rayan air do.
- maccard 12y agoIf you're in Europe, ryanair are steadily getting better and better. They still don't quite fit the bill, buit they're cheap and reliable and their dirty practices are getting less invasive
- westiseast 12y agoAirline pricing is such a racket - I can't imagine any other consumer facing business with such dirty pricing practices. It woulsnt surprise me if the only reason paying in USD or EUR is more expensive is simply because typically people paying in those currencies are just more likely to pay a silly high price.
- Doctor_Fegg 12y agoThis is a repost by Business Insider: it would be kinder to point to the original article at http://maphappy.org/2014/06/use-point-of-sale-to-get-cheaper-international-tickets/ http://maphappy.org/2014/06/use-point-of-sale-to-get-cheaper...
- smackfu 12y agoSince it's a full copy of the text, I'd imagine there is some business relationship involved, so we don't really know which one they would prefer being linked.
- ericamho 12y agoSo meta of me to find this on Hacker News! I run Map Happy, and yeah, we have a syndication relationship with BI. Thanks for being so kind to link back to the original piece... though it would have been nice to see our site headlined instead of the BI piece. :) Obviously, there are a lot of strategic PR rationales behind it.
- belorn 12y agoIts called price discrimination[1] and is fairly common practice. It can only really be maintained for a longer time if resale is impossible, and restrictions are added to ensure that market segments buy in the booking class range that has been established for them. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
- kruk 12y agoWhile the information useful in itself, the article has a misleading title and assumes that reader has information he doesn't. 1) What is "that same flight"? Is that a domestic US flight that gets cheaper when you're abroad? Or is it a domestic Thailand flight that gets cheaper when you're in Bangkok? 2) Currency has little to do with Point of Sale. What the article is saying is that using local currency may yield cheaper prices and that the airline's website might not allow you to change the currency directly but might change it automatically when you change the location.
- pornel 12y agoCould this be related to a difference in local taxes, e.g. VAT?
- coldcode 12y agoGenerally flight taxes are based on (1) departure airport (2) arrival airport (3) overflight countries. I remember looking at a flight from the US to France that had about a dozen government entities adding taxes and fees that exceeded the airline's actual price.
- blrgeek 12y agoHave seen mystifly.com work around this from a travel agent perspective. Growing pretty fast..
- junto 12y agoI use a similar trick for hire cars.
- charlie_vill 12y agoHi HN, not very savvy here but would be great to learn how to fake your location? I am in London at the moment and would like to travel through Europe for a bit for cheap.
- pbhjpbhj 12y agoSee up-thread on legality of setting airfares within Europe, http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-rights/air/index_en.htm http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-rights....
- aharonovich 12y agoI use TunnelBear
- jonalmeida 12y agoFWIW, this is what I do when I'm looking up air flights: - Create a $5 DigitalOcean droplet. - Setup a PPTP VPN [1] - Login and verify you're now in x location (where x is the region you created the droplet). - Search, find appropriate flight. - Repeat with another region if needed. - (optional) Login without a VPN and book your ticket. This is particularly helpful for Expedia. [1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-setup-your-own-vpn-with-pptp https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-setu...
- maaku 12y agoJust saved me $400. Awesome, thank you.
- ericamho 12y agoWould there be anyway to link to the original article instead of Business Insider which republished it? (says author of original article)
- sauere 12y agoSemi-related: The Art of Hidden-City Ticketing http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/magazine/mag-08subversion-t.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/magazine/mag-08subversion-... tl;dr: if you are traveling to a airport that is dominated by a single carrier, try to find a flight that includes that destination as a layover. Then just get off there (only works if you are not traveling with check-in luggage)
- hannibalhorn 12y agoPretty poor examples. I reside in Colombia - you can choose spanish and Colombia on the airline websites, but it all comes down to the country where your credit card was issued. LAN simply won't let you pay the domestic price with a foreign card, you'll have to physically go to a bank and hand over cash. Avianca has one of my American cards whitelisted after actually going down to the office to pay in person, but will generally decline the transaction for foreign cards. Until you've actually submitted a transaction and had it approved .. what you see on the site doesn't matter.