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This is a good presentation about the complexities in creating and pricing itineraries: http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-complexity/ITA
by kylec 12y ago
This is a good presentation about the complexities in creating and pricing itineraries:
http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-complexity/ITA-software-travel-complexity.pdf http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com...
Most companies don't want to take on this complexity, so they outsource it. The companies that provide this service, like ITA, tend to charge more money for more expensive queries, like multi-day searches, so most online search companies will only let you do the cheaper kinds of searches.
- dheera 12y agoI wonder if it would be viable to start an airline whose business model is "simple pricing". Just forget ITA altogether, sell tickets directly, and have the pricing model extremely simple. Like, total price = C/(time to departure) for some constant C, and use machine learning, or just a simple PID feedback loop on revenue to set C in order to be profitable.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoAs the presentation above suggests, this would have a problem with, well, staying profitable. Tourist air travel is so heavily underpriced that you can barely tank up the jet with what you collected from people. That's one of (or maybe even the) reason for such variety in ticket prices.
- jblok 12y agoI don't think this would work unfortunately. Players in air travel face a) intense competition and b) tiny profit margins. This forces some 'creative' pricing.
- notahacker 12y agoAirlines spend a absolute fortune on complex pricing for a reason... they wouldn't survive (in the absence of protectionism or a natural monopoly on niche routes) without it. The optimum "one size fits all" price doesn't exist.
- nathancahill 12y agoYou pretty much described Southwest Airlines.