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Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing

flightfox.com

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Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing

#11

Post by todsul »

Aloha wrote: post #8

I don't understand the pricing. Is it say 29 dollars to consult for me, then another unknown dollars for the fare, or is that 29 dollars all inclusive or per leg?

Hi Aloha, thanks for the feedback. We'll try to make this more obvious asap.

To explain, our pricing is "from" $29. That's for the simplest trip. It goes up with complexity because the experts must work harder. This doesn't include the fare, this is the fee for consulting.

As you can imagine, this doesn't make sense for short flights for say $100. But our experts really start to work wonders on trips over $300-500. For multi-continent or business class, the savings often get into the $1000s.

If you click on each product, you'll see tweets from real customers talking about different results.

Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing

#13

Post by bretthopper »

Your pricing/trips page (https://flightfox.com/trips) is really lacking some direction and information. I can easily see new Flightfox users being really confused. I was slightly confused and I've used Flightfox twice before.

I would suggest carrying over the 3 steps graphic/info from the main page to the top of the /trips page. But more importantly, you really need a better breakdown of exactly what those prices are. Even the "Guaranteed" keyword seems out of place and confusing. What exactly is the guarantee? That you'll charge me $149 no matter what?

Your create trips page is also lacking a bit of focus to me. Would be useful to have some more tangible examples of trips and example trip descriptions. I'm sure if you provided a simple example/template, you'd reduce some initial friction on first contact with an expert.

Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing

#14

Post by nlh »

todsul wrote: post #4
nlh wrote: post #3

I've been a huge FlightFox fan and used them for several big (and complicated) trips - they've gotten me spectacular deals each time. This was all in the competitive phase, btw - haven't tried the new format yet. One thing I just saw -- they dramatically raised the price if you're doing a "miles flight" -- it's now $99. I suppose I understand the thought process -- if you're not spending $$ on the flight, you're more…

Thanks nlh. First, thanks for the feedback on the pricing. We're talking about the miles product right now and will update it very soon. The high price was to account for most miles trips being fairly complex, but we'll segment a little more and offer you much better pricing. UPDATE: just spoke to the experts and made it $69 for now. We'll change the pricing to be +$19 to use miles, but that'll take a little time. Re…

Sounds totally reasonable. +$19 to use miles feels completely fair. I'm back in baby! ;)

(but seriously, thanks for the update. I know pricing is an imperfect science and takes time to optimize. Keep on kicking butt.)

Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing

#15

Post by jdcryans »

nlh wrote: post #3

I've been a huge FlightFox fan and used them for several big (and complicated) trips - they've gotten me spectacular deals each time. This was all in the competitive phase, btw - haven't tried the new format yet. One thing I just saw -- they dramatically raised the price if you're doing a "miles flight" -- it's now $99. I suppose I understand the thought process -- if you're not spending $$ on the flight, you're more…

(not a flightfox user but my 2 cents)

Booking an award trip can be much harder to do unless you have an easy route like a domestic non-stop. The ITA matrix won't show you those flights, expertflyer.com used to be really useful but right now you can't get access to the United (and most of *A) data, some airlines have vague routing rules that may or may not play in your favor depending on which agent you talk to on the phone (looking at you US Airways), etc.

I think 99$ is steal.

Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing

#16

Post by esteb_li »

I think crowdsourcing's issue is with the experience. For a customer, crowdsourcing requires more effort than plan google searching for example. You need to submit your issue, come back, edit/comment. Bad experience is much more frequent than good ones. And a neutral experience is closer to a bad experience which might result in the user not going through crowdsourcing again. Good luck with the new direction

Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing

#17

Post by cocoflunchy »

todsul wrote: post #9
cocoflunchy wrote: post #6

Has anyone tried FlightFox? I wonder if it's worth using for simple flights like NYC-Paris or NYC-SF.

hi coco, It's definitely better for longer trips, but NYC-Paris is a good one for us because I know our experts have a few tricks up their sleeves with this route. I often fly Montreal-SF so can also comment on NYC-SF. If you just want the cheapest economy flight AND you have checked bags, no, don't use Flightfox. However, if you have carry-on, then our experts can help. It gets much more interesting if you want to f…

It's too bad I already booked my flights for NYC-SF (carry-on) on the 15th of this month... I would have tried it. Do you think you would have been able to find better than the $318 roundtrip I got? Or business for the same price?

Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing

#18

Post by Aloha »

todsul wrote: post #11
Aloha wrote: post #8

I don't understand the pricing. Is it say 29 dollars to consult for me, then another unknown dollars for the fare, or is that 29 dollars all inclusive or per leg?

Hi Aloha, thanks for the feedback. We'll try to make this more obvious asap. To explain, our pricing is "from" $29. That's for the simplest trip. It goes up with complexity because the experts must work harder. This doesn't include the fare, this is the fee for consulting. As you can imagine, this doesn't make sense for short flights for say $100. But our experts really start to work wonders on trips over $300-500. F…

I'd suggest giving ranges for total out the door pricing based on mileage or some other formula. I know this is a hard thing to guesstimate because of how complex airfare pricing is.

I personally love the idea of paying for a travel consultant to take care of my trip for me - and more importantly, be there to take care of me if something goes awry - its like a modern day travel agent, but with more transparency in pricing. Showing what someone would have paid for said trip thru kayak or whatever would also show the added value - if you can figure out a way to give semi accurate numbers of the savings on the front side based on mileage and actual savings when the trip consultant had set up the trip for you would go a long way to getting return customers.

Offering travel insurance that actually does something (versus what most of the common carriers offer) might worthwhile, especially for complex fare hacking trips split across several carriers.

The biggest issue with the travel industry is a lack of transparency - none of the existing online services really help with that.

Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing

#19

Post by encoderer »

Congratulations. You invented travel agents.

Modernized them, I suppose.

Not exactly an exciting and thrilling turn of events but it seems the metrics all point toward this as a better solution so I suppose "exciting" is overrated.

Re: Why We Abandoned Crowdsourcing

#20

Post by todsul »

kingnight wrote: post #10
cocoflunchy wrote: post #6

Has anyone tried FlightFox? I wonder if it's worth using for simple flights like NYC-Paris or NYC-SF.

I used it a 1.5 years ago, during the competitive phase, for a two destination trip on a different continent. I came away not entirely thrilled by the results of the experts. After paying the fee, what they found was slightly cheaper than what I was able to do independently, but had a funkier itinerary that didn't justify the slight price reduction (that may have been actually offset by the cost of using the service)…

Hi kingnight, our experts will refund you if they can't help or you're not happy.

In the old system, there was always a lot of tension when we'd refund customers, because the experts would have already spent a lot of time. But in the new system, we made it so we (admin) can't actually refund you, only the experts can. This has worked wonders because they now use refunding as a form of segmentation. Often they'll refund after 30 seconds if it's clear they can't help, which is a far cry from the amount of effort they'd previous expend before a refund.

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