I would never book flight or hotel through 3rd party portal unless there's a substantial discount. Booking direct work better 90% of the time.
Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights
51–60 of 216 posts
Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
The flight I want has been fluctuating between $400 and $700 every couple of days for the last two weeks. It's $729 now and I need to gamble on whether it will go back down and I should wait, or whether it's about to go up even higher. I _hate_ flying solely because of the gambling mechanic built-in to the purchase.
It is an international flight that's 6+ months away? And the exact same flights (not just same days etc) Because that's the only time I can remember seeing something like that.
It's USA to Canada in less than 2 months.
Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights
#53I would never book flight or hotel through 3rd party portal unless there's a substantial discount. Booking direct work better 90% of the time.
I feel like that is a recipe for getting price gouged.
Or do you search for trips with 3rd party tools and then book it directly?
Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights
#54If the airlines know that most of tickets for a flight have been sold via Google, then what's to stop the airlines from drastically dropping the price of the last ticket just to cost Google a ton of money? There's no way this could work if the airlines were in a legitimately adversarial relationship with Google.
A) Why would they be in an adversarial relationship with Google?
B) What benefit do they get from doing something like this?
Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights
#55I would never book flight or hotel through 3rd party portal unless there's a substantial discount. Booking direct work better 90% of the time.
I feel like that is a recipe for getting price gouged. Or do you search for trips with 3rd party tools and then book it directly?
Search on 3rd party as part of the research. The thing is if there's anything comes up during the flight or stay, it's way easier to deal with the hotels or airlines on direct orders.
Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights
#56This appears to be a time-limited promotion. > When we predict the price won’t decrease for select itineraries booked between August 13 and September 2, we’ll guarantee the price won’t drop, and we’ll refund you the difference if it does.
When I read that I assumed that they want to observe the effect this guarantee has on pricing by changing people's booking behavior. Doing a time-limited study seems like a good way to do that.
I agree, but that seems like such a short window for an accurate assessment.
Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
If most tickets for that airline come from Google then that airline has little incentive to burn Google with its pricing practices.
They definitely have an incentive to take advantage of Google. If an airline regularly drops the price, and Google keeps refunding the price difference out of their own pockets, word will get out. People are going to preferentially book on that airline, knowing that the day before the flight they're going to get a big rebate. That brand loyalty will remain even if Google kicks them off of their platform. Moreover, as…
I have no idea what you're talking about. Why would the airline harm their own profit just to harm Google? There's no incentive to reduce how much they'll make. More so if they know that Google is guaranteeing the price, they can raise the price higher (or not lower it when they would, rather) to keep more of the profit for themselves.
Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights
#58Once their algorithm can predict prices to a certain level of accuracy, they can effectively offer investment hedging to the public for free, and use the publicity to drive commissions on referrals. Unlike other commodities whose value is subject to numerous economic forces, the pricing is set directly (by the airlines), and it is likely that simply by observing their pricing over time a sophisticated Google algorith…
But can't the airlines then introduce random price spikes into their own algorithm just to abuse Google?
Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
If most tickets for that airline come from Google then that airline has little incentive to burn Google with its pricing practices.
They definitely have an incentive to take advantage of Google. If an airline regularly drops the price, and Google keeps refunding the price difference out of their own pockets, word will get out. People are going to preferentially book on that airline, knowing that the day before the flight they're going to get a big rebate. That brand loyalty will remain even if Google kicks them off of their platform. Moreover, as…
The Google legal and business team must already have deals in place.
Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights
#60I recently searched for flights via Google Flights (for Frontier). The price shown for the exact same itinerary was ~$50 more on Google Flights than when I used my smartphone on a different network (disabled WiFi), going directly on Frontier's website. This could be because Google counted for things like, for example, 1 checked bag when comparing all flights. I don't have enough knowledge on the matter, but I will ab…
Google flights charges no middleman fee. It definitely would have added a carry on. you can easily remove it