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Launch HN: Roame (YC S23) – Flight search engine for your credit card points

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Re: Launch HN: Roame (YC S23) – Flight search engine for your credit card points

#101

Post by fwip »

timqin wrote: post #65
fwip wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To the average consumer, flying on business class is a dream experience. Is this true? I feel like the "average" person cares a lot more about their destination than the experience of the flight. Going to Disney World or the Carribean might be a dream experience, but having a bit more legroom and drinks on your flight is way, way down the list.

I don't have readily available hard data, but flying first or business class is glamorous and an aspirational luxury product. I believe the reason why the average consumer wants to buy luxury goods like Hermes, Chanel, Gucci, etc., is the same reason they would want to experience first and business class.

I feel like we must have different perceptions of the "average consumer." Nobody I know has any aspirations of spending several thousand dollars on a handbag.

Maybe it's different when you only talk to people who make at least six figures.

Re: Launch HN: Roame (YC S23) – Flight search engine for your credit card points

#102

Post by jaimex2 »

xyst wrote: post #72

Products like this only support more wasteful air travel. Not a fan of min-maxing “credit card points” either. These points programs are funded largely due to various fees imposed on the merchants that are often forced to accept the credit cards. Note: the airline and “signature” cards often impose “premium” card fees in addition to the bevy of other fees (bank, network, transaction, …) associated with accepting debi…

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

These stupid systems have been around forever and we need to exploit them more if you want to see them gone.

You're already paying the fees, may as well get something out of it.

Re: Launch HN: Roame (YC S23) – Flight search engine for your credit card points

#103

Post by splonk »

timqin wrote: post #96
flippyhead wrote: post #92

I'm excited about this. However, when I attempt to find some of the best-seeming deals, I cannot find them on the airline site. You list a flight from SEA to TYO on 10/16/24, booked via AA that appears to use Alaksa to SFO, then JAL to TYO for 80k points one way. That's great! However, following the links on your site, the lowest point option is 275k points. This is just one example of several I found.

Got it. I just checked and don't see it on Roame live search. 80K points booked via AA and including JAL leg to Tokyo, sounds like a JAL First Class from SFO to Tokyo saver fare with an Alaska domestic leg thrown in. If that is the case, it could be that the flight was booked or in someone's cart in between your search and going to the website. Japan routes are extremely popular right now. Please let me know if you r…

I had similar issues with SFO-LHR on August 14th, and the issue (probably) was that the result had mixed cabins (business SFO-LAX, economy LAX-LHR), and the airline site (Qantas) didn't obviously display the same result. Probably it would have if I'd finessed the search on Qantas bit more, but I don't think your target novice user would figure it out.

As a side note, I despise seeing mixed cabin results for routes like that when I'm searching for business/first, where it's one hour in business and then 10 hours in economy. As far as I'm concerned that's an economy flight, or "economy mixed" at best. I know this is a standard practice for travel sites, this is just my particular hobbyhorse to rant about when searching for points flights. I'm guessing the "premium" slider somehow is supposed to deal with that since bumping it up removes that route from the search results, but the intended use of that slider is pretty nonobvious to me.

Re: Launch HN: Roame (YC S23) – Flight search engine for your credit card points

#104

Post by splonk »

sireat wrote: post #63

Cool idea! Is this product of interest to Europeans? It is unclear from the signup page.

It seems the search would be useful for Europeans who manage to gather airline points, but that would be much less common in Europe than in the US, due to the lack of credit card awards programs.

Re: Launch HN: Roame (YC S23) – Flight search engine for your credit card points

#105

Post by timqin »

arcticbull wrote: post #98
timqin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! Love more feedback, especially from travel hackers. 1) You're right. We have Advertiser Disclosures on all other pages, but will make the disclosures more prominent. Going to push out a change today/tomorrow. Affiliate commissions are not a big revenue driver right now. 2) We're working on a new design so the last refresh is more prominent. Currently, you'll be able to see the "Update ## ago" when you eith…

> 4) We're working on adding more loyalty program coverage. Our free tool is in real-time though, so slightly different than the cached tools. We do have a cached tool called SkyView. Many loyalty programs are very prickly about scraping. Are you planning direct integrations, or are you just going to go head-to-head with Akamai's anti-botting tech?

Good question. Can't get into our secret sauce on a public forum, but can say we are working on addressing those limitations

Re: Launch HN: Roame (YC S23) – Flight search engine for your credit card points

#106

Post by timqin »

timr wrote: post #82
timqin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is an interesting question because there isn't a clear cut answer. The airline industry is fragmented globally, there are tons of national carriers. And each airline team has different incentives. Airlines, especially US airlines are making billions of dollars a year by selling points to credit card companies. So in theory, they actually want as many people in the world of points as possible because they a co…

> Airlines, especially US airlines are making billions of dollars a year by selling points to credit card companies. So in theory, they actually want as many people in the world of points as possible because they a consistent high margin revenue from credit card companies. They want to sell as many points as possible, for as much as they can, and redeem them for as little as they can. (And in the middle, they want yo…

Yes, but it's a push and pull. Short term vs. long-term. If you devalue your points too much and make them too hard to redeem, then consumers won't want your miles.

Also, if airlines get too greedy with their points/miles, US government will step in to try and regulate and airlines certainly do not want that. (https://thepointsguy.com/news/congressional-investigation-ai...)

Re: Launch HN: Roame (YC S23) – Flight search engine for your credit card points

#107

Post by timqin »

splonk wrote: post #103
timqin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got it. I just checked and don't see it on Roame live search. 80K points booked via AA and including JAL leg to Tokyo, sounds like a JAL First Class from SFO to Tokyo saver fare with an Alaska domestic leg thrown in. If that is the case, it could be that the flight was booked or in someone's cart in between your search and going to the website. Japan routes are extremely popular right now. Please let me know if you r…

I had similar issues with SFO-LHR on August 14th, and the issue (probably) was that the result had mixed cabins (business SFO-LAX, economy LAX-LHR), and the airline site (Qantas) didn't obviously display the same result. Probably it would have if I'd finessed the search on Qantas bit more, but I don't think your target novice user would figure it out. As a side note, I despise seeing mixed cabin results for routes li…

Yea, I've noticed that airlines categorize mixed cabins differently.

Appreciate the feedback. We need to add a tooltip to the premium percentage slider.

Re: Launch HN: Roame (YC S23) – Flight search engine for your credit card points

#108

Post by arcticbull »

timqin wrote: post #105
arcticbull wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4) We're working on adding more loyalty program coverage. Our free tool is in real-time though, so slightly different than the cached tools. We do have a cached tool called SkyView. Many loyalty programs are very prickly about scraping. Are you planning direct integrations, or are you just going to go head-to-head with Akamai's anti-botting tech?

Good question. Can't get into our secret sauce on a public forum, but can say we are working on addressing those limitations

That's great to hear. Go get 'em :)

Re: Launch HN: Roame (YC S23) – Flight search engine for your credit card points

#110

Post by timqin »

pukka2 wrote: post #90

Feedback: if I select business/first as my search, please start by listing business/first flights. As it stood, it started by listing off flights that were like: 85% economy / 15% business. That's not what I was looking for.

I get it. So we categorize any mixed fares by the highest class. We do offer a premium percentage filter to sort based on the percentage of the itinerary in business or first class
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