Seattle-based Farecast, now in private beta, is an airfare pricing comparision tool that also uses a predictive algorithm to recommend when you buy your ticket. So the idea is to show the user not just who has the cheapest ticket, but whether or not waiting might make sense as well. Look for Minneapolis-based Flyspy to launch a similar service in the near future.
The site is well designed and the interface clearly communicates pricing and predictive information. At this point in the beta you must choose Seattle or Boston as the departure city, so I looked at Seattle - Los Angeles flights. The cheapest option was $329 (on American Airlines), and Farecast tells me with 80% certainty that the lowest fares will rise by $50 over the next seven days.
Ok, great. But Southwest, which has flights for $308 round trip, isn’t included in the price comparison. And that’s the real problem here. Farecast is a nice solution that distills useful information from complete pricing chaos by the airlines. But Southwest doesn’t play those games, and doesn’t open their service up to comparison engines like Farecast. So the lowest and most understandable prices are excluded from the service.
While I like Farecast, and will use it to see if I can get a flight for less than Southwest charges, what I’d really like to see is our airlines pull their collective head out of their collective ass and adopt a pricing model that makes sense. One, for instance, that doesn’t require a proprietary algorithm like Farecast’s to understand.
John Cook has more. Sign up on the home page for a private beta invitation. Thanks Noah for the invitation.
I like the predictive aspects to the site. Is there anything else they offer over Expedia/Yahoo! Travel/Travelocity?
Waiting for a beta invite….
http://leunamiur.blogspot.com/
“what I’d really like to see is our airlines pull their collective head out of their collective ass and adopt a pricing model that makes sense.” holler my brother.
Michael,
Regarding this comment:
“what I’d really like to see is our airlines pull their collective head out of their collective ass and adopt a pricing model that makes sense.”
I would like to see what model you would adopt in the airline industry. I would go back in your blog a few reviews and read up on the Super Oyster model. Variable pricing allows airlines to make more money (revenue not profit…ha) than they would with a fairly flat pricing model. Although the pricing model is very difficult to understand, it is one that is required to compete within the industry itself. Adopt another model, and you will be toast in the airline industry currently in the US (RyanAir is an interesting model, but no one here is yet willing to adopt that model).
Care to start an airline on your own? I would bet it wouldn’t work out well for you.
Bobby
How accurate are the predictions regarding the included airlines?
Michael -
I was once the Director of Internet Marketing at one of the major car rental companies. The airlines pricing models are overly complex and reflect the ball of spaghetti they have managed to weave over the years. I think THEY’D like to see a simpler more streamlined pricing method. But, they’re not all going to move in unison in that direction. First mover gets creamed as someone else noted above.
As for Southwest… They do their own deal and report quarter after quarter profits where the others don’t (Note: I didn’t say can’t… I said don’t). Southwest is smart like a fox. They intentionally drive traffic TO their site without the added reach of SideStep or Farecast or anyone else. They’re fine without it. And, as a result, you KNOW where to go if you want to check Southwest prices. Inconvenient? Maybe a little. But, good for Southwest’s business model.
Orbitz is about as close as your going to see the airlines come to competing and THAT didn’t even play out as well as expected for them in the end…
Farecast and SideStep are GREAT tools. Use them all the time. Just don’t expect to see SWA participate. They don’t want to and they don’t need to (just look at those herds of people piling into their planes! Self included).
what about mobissimo? i haven’t seen a review of their service…
From a graphic design point of view, I would have expected the colour scheme on the ‘Wait’ and ‘Buy Now’ icons to be reversed. If I’m to wait for something, I expected to see amber or red, much like a stop light. Anyone agree?
Actually, the site isn’t really predicting anything. All fares are published by the airlines 330 days in advance, and includes the from/to dates that they are valid. Therefore, if you know that the lower fare is only valid for x more days, then it goes up, you can easily say “buy now”, and visa-versa.
adopt a pricing model that makes sense
no institution is going to help us undermine it. the opening of fare information would be bad for business, so the airlines will work to stop it from happening for as long as possible. who needs customers when you own Congress, anyways?
@Tom, no. 9
If what you said is true, why does the price of the same ticket on the same flight in the same class vary by up to $50 on 2 consecutive days? Airlines that I’ve quoted with are obviously using some sort of capacity, time-of-day, # of days prior to flight algorithm to sell the most seats for the greatest price.
I have a PDF that I’ve saved over the past month or so called “PriceIsRight.pdf” that discusses airline pricing models. Unfortunately I can’t find the source site. It is however a scan of the magazine “Engineering & Science No. 3, 2005″, page 32, and the article is titled “The Price is Right Mysterious” by R. Preston McAfee. See specifically the graph at the top of page 36.
Check it out if you can find it– offers some insight into the turbulence in airline ticket pricing.
You can find the article Dave mentioned at http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/ eands/articles/LXVIII_3/McAfee.pdf
I have to concur with Dave. I was looking for prices on the exact same flight on 2 consecutive days (just forgot to save the itineraries) and to my surprise, saw the price go DOWN by 25%. I was very happy I had procrastinated!
the museum of modern betas has a list of the top 100 betas as per delicious favorites…. and how many have come out of beta do you ask?…. 4……
can i have an invite, plz?! newyorkdimka at (google’s mail) dot com
Carro usado invitacion para eso por favor?
Very nice write-up. I agree with many of your comments. I don’t normally fly Southwest, but I didn’t realise they could be that cheap.
Any chance of an invite?
I received an invite tonight and I’ve got to admit, very cool site. I actually did a test to check Southwest against Farecast for multiple routes and found that it Southwest had the low price maybe 25%. This might have to do with the fact that cheapest flights usually sellout on Southwest (Internet Specials).
“Farecast, a Seattle-based travel start-up, is in private beta. I was invited to try it out, and I did. On the whole, it’s pretty good - but I am fearful that beyond the relatively small amount of whiz-bang buzz their “hook” adds, they are really just another meta-search site. Albeit a clean…”
Could I have an invite please? (emerick7[at]connecttime[dot]net) — thanks!
Southwest is a right wing company and a major supporter of the Bushes.
I would love an invite as well from any one willing
oops I forgot an e-mail address. you can use
airplanejunkie \/at/\iamfast.com
Beats having to check all dates on all sites. Think it’s a great idea.
Wow like an invite too.. awake356|at|(googles email service)|dot|com
“# Jon
May 27th, 2006 at 5:32 am
Southwest is a right wing company and a major supporter of the Bushes.”
Thanks Jon
I will make sure to give them my business as much as possible now.
Be nice if they had a readily-apparent email address to send to. Their sign-up process has a bug (it doesn’t accept gmail-style “plus” addresses), which I’d report for them if I could. I can wait until I have an invitation to report it, but it’d be useful info for them now.
Can someone send me an invite? Thanks. surenraveendran at gmail.com
Farecast is wandering into dangerous waters. The ‘fear’ that prices might go up may be attractive to some, but if you’re a regular traveller to/from certain destinations, it’s possible to game the system without any sophisticated tools.
But no-one can beat the low cost airlines like SW or, in our case, Easyjet/RyanAir. These companies have smart business models, supported by lean systems that are very difficult to game. In other words, they don’t play by ‘the rules.’
Isn’t that what innovation is supposed to be about?
@Dave No. 11
I found the pdf that you mentioned. It can be downloaded here.
http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~mc.....sRight.pdf
I hate SWA. Assign me a seat already.
Will gladly pay more for a “major”.
Sounds great. Can anyone send me an invite?
What a worhtless site.
may i please have an invite. thank you
Hi Mike,
I think Farecast in some ways is designed to fail if too many people use the service. Here are my thoughts, which are also located on my blog here:
http://www.mrmarkets.com/2006/.....t_ser.html
If Farecast serves millions of people, it is designed to fail
Farecast could absolutely change the way people think about buying airline tickets online. It is only available in Seattle and Boston right now, but once it rolls out to all cities, you will be able to see historical pricing for routes at a given time of the year. This is great because airlines are quite predictable in the pricing moves they make. Observe the pricing graph, and you can easily tell if it is a good time to buy a given ticket, or best to wait a few days.
The problem here is that Farecast is designed to be a victim of its success. That is, if everyone uses Farecast, then the airlines have a serious problem because their pricing schemes will no longer work. The result? Airlines will change how they price, which will cause Farecast to become a whole lot less good at predicting prices.
What can Farecast do to avoid this? If they have meaningful patents, they can prevent competitors like Flyspy from making the same information available to everyone. If that is the case, then Farecast could sell subscriptions. By limiting it to people most willing to pay, the impact of Farecast on revenues would likely not be great enough to force the airlines to change their pricing policies.
However, as Mike Arrington points out, it may be in the best interests of consumers that websites like Farecast exist. Why? Because if airlines are pushed, they may come up with a simpler pricing structure.
Funniest of all is that Southwest is not on Farecast, often has the best rates, has the simplest pricing of all and has been profitable for years while other airlines have declared bankruptcy multiple times.
Go figure.
Could you send me an invite?
This is indeed a great travel site, but it lacks integration with other aspects of travel. We invite you to try:
http://www.smart-travel.tk
Intuitive and fast search tool for flights, hotels, visa info, weather, etc.