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Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

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Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#81

Post by FaceKicker »

Pretty tangential, but why is it that none of the flight search engines include Southwest? I realize that Southwest doesn't give their fare info to whoever the other airlines give it to, but what's stopping someone from just scraping southwest.com every hour or so for the current fares? Or even if scraping is against their TOS, couldn't they hire one data entry employee to manually go through and add Southwest's flights every day? Or is it somehow illegal to publish Southwest's prices?

I imagine it would be a big competitive advantage for whichever one did it first - it's pretty annoying how every time I want to search for flights I have to first search on Kayak/Hipmunk/GoogleFlightSearch and then separately go to southwest.com and wade through their slow, awful search interface.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#82

Post by muratmutlu »

FaceKicker wrote: post #81

Pretty tangential, but why is it that none of the flight search engines include Southwest? I realize that Southwest doesn't give their fare info to whoever the other airlines give it to, but what's stopping someone from just scraping southwest.com every hour or so for the current fares? Or even if scraping is against their TOS, couldn't they hire one data entry employee to manually go through and add Southwest's flig…

I booked a Southwest flight last week using Kayak. Try it for yourself, here's a screengrab from just now

http://cl.ly/image/3j0Z2m1Y2N44

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#83

Post by calbear81 »

FaceKicker wrote: post #81

Pretty tangential, but why is it that none of the flight search engines include Southwest? I realize that Southwest doesn't give their fare info to whoever the other airlines give it to, but what's stopping someone from just scraping southwest.com every hour or so for the current fares? Or even if scraping is against their TOS, couldn't they hire one data entry employee to manually go through and add Southwest's flig…

Southwest does not believe in distributing their fares through the metasearch or OTA channel. They want to own the customer and make sure there's only one destination to book Southwest fares and that is Southwest.com and it's worked out pretty well for them.

The hard part for scraping is that it's both against their TOS and you wouldn't be able to have accurate availability and price information through manual data entry. The nature of how frequent price changes and the number of possible combinations of fare types/routes/availability is what gave rise to companies like ITA.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#84

Post by calbear81 »

photorized wrote: post #68
calbear81 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

kayak.com/explore solves this problem for ya.

no it doesn't, not for me or anyone I know at least. I can elaborate.

Ahh, I see that it didn't draw the lines but it handles the budget constraints while dynamically updating the map.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#85

Post by FaceKicker »

muratmutlu wrote: post #82
FaceKicker wrote: post #81

Pretty tangential, but why is it that none of the flight search engines include Southwest? I realize that Southwest doesn't give their fare info to whoever the other airlines give it to, but what's stopping someone from just scraping southwest.com every hour or so for the current fares? Or even if scraping is against their TOS, couldn't they hire one data entry employee to manually go through and add Southwest's flig…

I booked a Southwest flight last week using Kayak. Try it for yourself, here's a screengrab from just now http://cl.ly/image/3j0Z2m1Y2N44

Interesting, I've never noticed Southwest results in my Kayak searches before (maybe it's new). But when I try it, it doesn't actually give the price as in your screenshot, it just has a link labeled "Info" (which goes to the southwest.com homepage) where the price would normally be. I wonder if it has something to do with you being in the UK?

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#86

Post by photorized »

zalew wrote: post #79
photorized wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

zalew: try again, I added it. Apparently that airport just opened in July 2012, and formerly was a disused military airfield? That's why I didn't have it. Thanks again.

WMI — Warsaw-Modlin WAW — Okecie EPBC — Babice modlin now appers, but still don't know what babice are doing there :) yep, as I said, it was just recently opened as a passenger airport, and major european discount brands fly from there so by now it should be in every db. if you want me to help you sort out these issues, feel free to drop me an email; I've had various ideas around travel websites (the one I'm working…

zalew, thank you very much for helping me fix the data - I will drop you an email with details.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#87

Post by FaceKicker »

calbear81 wrote: post #83
FaceKicker wrote: post #81

Pretty tangential, but why is it that none of the flight search engines include Southwest? I realize that Southwest doesn't give their fare info to whoever the other airlines give it to, but what's stopping someone from just scraping southwest.com every hour or so for the current fares? Or even if scraping is against their TOS, couldn't they hire one data entry employee to manually go through and add Southwest's flig…

Southwest does not believe in distributing their fares through the metasearch or OTA channel. They want to own the customer and make sure there's only one destination to book Southwest fares and that is Southwest.com and it's worked out pretty well for them. The hard part for scraping is that it's both against their TOS and you wouldn't be able to have accurate availability and price information through manual data e…

> The hard part for scraping is that it's both against their TOS and you wouldn't be able to have accurate availability and price information through manual data entry. The nature of how frequent price changes and the number of possible combinations of fare types/routes/availability is what gave rise to companies like ITA.

Anecdotally, whenever I've checked Southwest prices multiple days in a row they usually stay the same. So I'd imagine it would still be a valuable enough resource if there were someone who did this manually at the granularity of a day, even if when you clicked through to buy the tickets they occasionally wouldn't match the price the search engine told you. You could even have a "report this price as incorrect" button.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#88

Post by muratmutlu »

photorized wrote: post #17

I don't like any of the existing travel sites, so even had to write one for friends and family (we like pick a random place and just go): http://www.somewherenice.net/ This was put together over several weekends, so don't be too harsh on me. :)

This is great, what's your traffic like? Where did you get your data from?

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#89

Post by muratmutlu »

FaceKicker wrote: post #85
muratmutlu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I booked a Southwest flight last week using Kayak. Try it for yourself, here's a screengrab from just now http://cl.ly/image/3j0Z2m1Y2N44

Interesting, I've never noticed Southwest results in my Kayak searches before (maybe it's new). But when I try it, it doesn't actually give the price as in your screenshot, it just has a link labeled "Info" (which goes to the southwest.com homepage) where the price would normally be. I wonder if it has something to do with you being in the UK?

that's weird, when I booked my flight I was in the states...might be certain routes or something?

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#90

Post by zalew »

zalew wrote: post #35
photorized wrote: post #17

I don't like any of the existing travel sites, so even had to write one for friends and family (we like pick a random place and just go): http://www.somewherenice.net/ This was put together over several weekends, so don't be too harsh on me. :)

I'm working on a travel (many)weekend(s) project myself yet to launch, so I won't be too harsh, but... :P I put Warsaw in, and the suggested airports were Okecie (correct) and Babice (it's in Krakow), Modlin was missing. And all the result were in the USA. I like the design theme with all the backgrounds etc. and the logo, cool idea. You should leave some way to contact you with feedback on the page. Keep on, good lu…

sorry, when I've read Babice, I thought Balice (Krakow), it's late. Babice is of course indeed in Warsaw, even nearby me, but it's for small aircrafts and stuff, not passenger airplanes.
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