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Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

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Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#11

Post by frogulis »

AnonC wrote: post #6
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #3

I travel to my home country once a year to visit family, but have it set up so that my origin for the round trip is the home country (ie XYZ-SFO-XYZ rather than SFO-XYZ-SFO). The ticket is generally half the cost, which adds up when you're traveling with family. I can only do this because I consistently travel to that same place every year, otherwise I wouldn't be able to swap the origin. It also requires you knowing…

Please elaborate since this is not clear. Are you actually doing a round trip on SFO-XYZ-SFO but buying two half priced (or lower than half priced) tickets for XYZ-SFO-XYZ (date 1) and XYZ-SFO-XYZ (date 2) and not using one leg on each of those tickets ? Long ago I’d read that airlines don’t take this well.

My understanding is that the poster does take all legs of the round trip, but the last leg is a year in the future

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#12

Post by INTPenis »

Referrers that lower price on travel booking sites are a real thing. One trick I've noticed works sometimes is clicking on ads in online newspapers of your home country.

So if you're in country A, but you're browsing the news website of country B, they might see where you're browsing from and offer up an ad for travel from/to your specific country A. This is meant for expats because the whole site and the ad is in the language of country B.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#13

Post by thrdbndndn »

It can work, but rarely. The international flight price has been very well globalized.

What used to work very well is to rent a car through a foreign website. I live(d) in the US and was planning a trip in California for a few weeks back in ~2015. By going through a major car rental company's UK website, I literally halved my cost.

I didn't have much luck with this trick last time I travelled though, unfortunately.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#14

Post by FearNotDaniel »

the_third_wave wrote: post #9
rhtgrg wrote: post #4

Recently I paid to book better seats on an Air France flight and since the website was a hot mess (specifically the payment portal) I tried various VPNs to try and get through. To my surprise, prices were significantly different (about ~20% variation) depending on country, and it was most expensive in...France. This was on a flight that had already been booked from the US long ago.

Could be taxes making up the difference, 20% sounds suspiciously close to the French V.A.T. rate of... 20% [1]. [1] https://www.vatupdate.com/2021/04/21/vat-rates-in-france/

There's no VAT on international flights. Other taxes, perhaps, but that 20% difference is not so easily explained.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#15

Post by Zircom »

judge2020 wrote: post #7
AnonC wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please elaborate since this is not clear. Are you actually doing a round trip on SFO-XYZ-SFO but buying two half priced (or lower than half priced) tickets for XYZ-SFO-XYZ (date 1) and XYZ-SFO-XYZ (date 2) and not using one leg on each of those tickets ? Long ago I’d read that airlines don’t take this well.

Also curious, since I imagine airlines try to cancel subsequent flights if you didn’t get on the initial flight to ensure someone gets in that seat (at a higher price)

He isn't skipping any flights. He presumably bought a one-way ticket to XYZ years ago, and since then each year he books an XYS->SFO->XYZ roundtrip for a year long "visit" to SFO before returning "home" to XYZ for a little bit before booking another round trip for another year long "visit" back in SFO, and so on.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#16

Post by choeger »

Absolutely. I had a 25% discount offer for the same flight when booking through the American site vs. the European one. Unfortunately, they also asked for an invoice address in the states. So I opted out of that airline altogether.

Just wait for the day when airlines buy hotel booking data and increase your price because you already booked a non-refundable room. Or they look into your messaging service or social network for clues in how determined you are to go (e.g., to a funeral or job interview). Privacy is valuable, indeed. Even in hard cash.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#17

Post by harry8 »

The theory of Price Discrimination, simple stuff, for anyone who isn't up on the econs 101 jargon, looks like it's here:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price_discrimination.as...

Everyone including you will do it whenever you can when selling. The logical place surveillance capitalism is going isn't pretty. Will regulation protect consumers or will Goog, FB, Apple etc capture a good amount of everyone's consumer surplus? Would mass consumer outrage influence regulators more than lobbying cash?

I don't have any answers, if don't think much of the questions it'd be interesting to know why you think that way.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#19

Post by bunabhucan »

AnonC wrote: post #6
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #3

I travel to my home country once a year to visit family, but have it set up so that my origin for the round trip is the home country (ie XYZ-SFO-XYZ rather than SFO-XYZ-SFO). The ticket is generally half the cost, which adds up when you're traveling with family. I can only do this because I consistently travel to that same place every year, otherwise I wouldn't be able to swap the origin. It also requires you knowing…

Please elaborate since this is not clear. Are you actually doing a round trip on SFO-XYZ-SFO but buying two half priced (or lower than half priced) tickets for XYZ-SFO-XYZ (date 1) and XYZ-SFO-XYZ (date 2) and not using one leg on each of those tickets ? Long ago I’d read that airlines don’t take this well.

This is a common hack with business travel where prices of flights including a Saturday stay are much cheaper (aimed at holidaymakers) than weekday flights (business travel). If you know you will need to travel to XYZ every second week M-F for two months then you buy one two month return SFO-XYZ-SFO and then buy the rest of the flights as 11 day flights back from XYZ Friday to the Monday of the following week (XYZ-SFO-XYZ)

All the tickets include "weekend stays" but you never spend a weekend in XYZ.

The OP may have used a one way ticket or something for the original trip since airlines don't book more than a year out.

Re: Can you buy the same ticket at a lower price if you buy it from another country?

#20

Post by fwlr »

AnonC wrote: post #6
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #3

I travel to my home country once a year to visit family, but have it set up so that my origin for the round trip is the home country (ie XYZ-SFO-XYZ rather than SFO-XYZ-SFO). The ticket is generally half the cost, which adds up when you're traveling with family. I can only do this because I consistently travel to that same place every year, otherwise I wouldn't be able to swap the origin. It also requires you knowing…

Please elaborate since this is not clear. Are you actually doing a round trip on SFO-XYZ-SFO but buying two half priced (or lower than half priced) tickets for XYZ-SFO-XYZ (date 1) and XYZ-SFO-XYZ (date 2) and not using one leg on each of those tickets ? Long ago I’d read that airlines don’t take this well.

The poster lives in SFO and wants to visit XYZ for a week once a year. Rather than buy SFO->XYZ->SFO tickets (which are packages that consist of “a flight from SFO to XYZ on the 1st of April” and “a flight from XYZ to SFO on the 8th of April”), the poster instead buys XYZ->SFO->XYZ tickets (which are packages that consist of “a flight from XYZ to SFO on the 8th of April” and “a flight from SFO to XYZ on the 1st of April next year”).

Because the poster is repeating this purchase every year, it results in the same long-term flight pattern. However, because they have shifted the airline’s window into those travel patterns by a half step, all of the flights look cheaper to the airline’s pricing algorithm.

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