Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#21

Post by jmarbach » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

lmkg wrote: post #4

Bing Travel had predictions for fare fluctuations for air tickets back in 2009. It was pretty awesome back when I flied a lot, but they apparently killed the feature in 2014. Now Google's bringing it back, two years later. I don't understand the future sometimes. ¯\(°_o)/¯

Similarly, the article mentions that Google Flights is now more closely competing with Hopper, a mobile app for finding flights. Hopper already offers this price prediction service, and it is powered by Sabre's price prediction API: https://developer.sabre.com/docs/read/rest_apis/air/intellig...

Disclosure: I own another competing flight search tool, https://concorde.io

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#22

Post by falsedan » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

yalogin wrote: post #10

Almost every site offers this. Isn't this unhelpful in the last ng run? Consumer behavior will change and the price will smooth out or the window of lower prices will be gone or the percentage of change will become smaller.

Carriers have fleets of yield management analysts whose entire job is to keep the ticket prices from being the fair market price. Don't worry, prices will avoid settling on a steady state.

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#23

Post by karakal » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

I'm curious, how does one gain access to flight schedules/fares? Is this something that anyone can get their hands on and create a service (complexity aside), or do you need some sort of license that costs thousands of dollars?

Does each airline have their own way of exporting this data? Is there a single entity that aggregates from all of them? How does the actual data look like? (Is it a dump every X hours, or something more modern like a stream you can subscribe to?).

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#24

Post by udfalkso » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #2

I almost never use anything other google flights when searching for a ticket. The UI is just so much better and easier to use than the ridiculous bloated crap that most travel sites are (especially when they are trying to shove car-rental and hotel deals in your face). The one drawback is sometimes they are missing local / smaller airlines from their list of flights (which can be a major price difference from the maj…

I just gave it a try because of this comment. Found the UI rather confusing actually. It only showed me one flight? And, that was almost double the price of what I booked yesterday (and found via http://hipmunk.com which is my personal favorite tool that I think has an excellent interface)

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#25

Post by 8ytecoder » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

lmkg wrote: post #4

Bing Travel had predictions for fare fluctuations for air tickets back in 2009. It was pretty awesome back when I flied a lot, but they apparently killed the feature in 2014. Now Google's bringing it back, two years later. I don't understand the future sometimes. ¯\(°_o)/¯

I use Hopper[1] for that. It has been accurate so far.

[1]https://www.hopper.com/

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#26

Post by bluetidepro » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

I've searched with Google Flights a few times, but they are consistently more expensive than the flights I find with other services (Hipmunk, specifically). Has anyone else noticed this before, too?

Does anyone know why the prices would be that much different? For the searches I've done, Google Flights is close to $150 more than what Hipmunk shows. Does Hipmunk maybe just have some sort of promo or lower price that Google Flights can't offer?

EDIT: This curiosity also relates to what "karakal" is asking in their comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12736433 - Like is this data just universal or do some services get better deals than others?

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#27

Post by throwaway287391 » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #2

I almost never use anything other google flights when searching for a ticket. The UI is just so much better and easier to use than the ridiculous bloated crap that most travel sites are (especially when they are trying to shove car-rental and hotel deals in your face). The one drawback is sometimes they are missing local / smaller airlines from their list of flights (which can be a major price difference from the maj…

> The one drawback is sometimes they are missing local / smaller airlines from their list of flights (which can be a major price difference from the major ones) on short flights.

Not to mention they're missing Southwest, but that's Southwest's fault -- they seem to have some sort of policy against allowing any third parties to list their flights. In addition to being really annoying since I have to make two searches rather than one every time I want to book a domestic flight due to a lone holdout, it also makes zero sense to me. How could not having all that free advertising from flight search engines possibly be a good thing for Southwest? I care enough to go to the trouble of searching in two places, but I doubt most people do.

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#28

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 5:04 PM UTC

karakal wrote: post #23

I'm curious, how does one gain access to flight schedules/fares? Is this something that anyone can get their hands on and create a service (complexity aside), or do you need some sort of license that costs thousands of dollars? Does each airline have their own way of exporting this data? Is there a single entity that aggregates from all of them? How does the actual data look like? (Is it a dump every X hours, or some…

[deleted]

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#29

Post by mikeash » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 5:04 PM UTC

yalogin wrote: post #10

Almost every site offers this. Isn't this unhelpful in the last ng run? Consumer behavior will change and the price will smooth out or the window of lower prices will be gone or the percentage of change will become smaller.

It will remain helpful because not everyone will use the tool or follow its advice.

It's like coupons. In theory, coupons are pointless because the coupon price just becomes "the price." In practice, a lot of people can't be bothered to deal with coupons.

Like coupons, this becomes another mechanism for price discrimination. People who really want to pay a lower price will use tools like this to accomplish it. People who don't care as much won't bother and will likely pay more.

Re: Google Flights will now tell you when fares will increase

#30

Post by twentythree » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 5:05 PM UTC

yalogin wrote: post #10

Almost every site offers this. Isn't this unhelpful in the last ng run? Consumer behavior will change and the price will smooth out or the window of lower prices will be gone or the percentage of change will become smaller.

It might be unhelpful to the users who know how to take advantage of the current system, but hopefully the net impact will be greater price transparency, which helps consumers in the long run; people will pay more for things which cost the airline more, but not for arbitrary reasons like booking too early.

In general, flight pricing seems rather opaque; I'm always confused by flights from city A to city B that are more expensive than flights from city A to city C with a layover in city B. I'm all for more transparency of the air travel market.