Route246
Full time employment: Posting here.
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2023
- Messages
- 695
This may have already been mentioned here. If so, I apologize and please ignore.
Quick start simple answer: Clear your cookies and browser cache before search for travel deals. BTW, clearing your browser cache and cookies will automatically log you off so DO NOT login and do any searches with this method.
I'm not a traveler type but when I do I try to optimize price paid, especially for lodging.
We all have our own favorite search sites and online agencies, I get that. Here is a hack that I've used multiple times and it seems to work for hotels.
My consolidator of choice is Trivago. No special reason, they just seem to consolidate agency sites that I prefer (hotels, agoda, booking, etc.). When I'm searching for a room, usually many months in advance I keep a bookmark and search daily or as often as possible.
One thing I learned is to clear all of my cookies and browsing history for the Trivago and affiliated sites. Chrome makes this easy in settings, not sure about other browsers. What I have found is you sometimes (not always) get cheaper quotes "coming off the street" vs coming from a browser session where they know a lot about you. There must be an enticement attribute in their search AI or something. You will be logged off when you do this so that is OK, do not login when doing searches.
I've done experiments with search before and after clearing cookies and the results and prices are usually better and never worse. I have found that incognito mode doesn't make a difference, the main thing is cookies and browsing history.
Everyone is mentioning how expensive travel fares and lodging costs are. There are two reasons in my opinion. First is obvious, the dollar is strong, the economy is strong and people, especially young people are feeling positive about the economy in spite of all of the doomsday clickbait out there. Second is that pricing mechanisms are using very sophisticated AI these days, there is a huge B2B (business to business) sector out there using AI to optimize for the consumer surplus (area under the supply/demand curve where pricing can be increased without penalty to profits) so this is what we are seeing. It is just a classic optimization problem and AI and all of the VC money pouring into it now has enabled this to happen. It is effectively an arms race between us (with the $$ to spend) and the industry (trying to gather up as much of our $$ as possible). Don't fret, just be more vigilant and be aware this is happening.
What I have found is that it is OK to login just before paying or confirming your itinerary. At that point the price will not change. If you login before that the price can and almost always changes as that "teaser" rate you are getting is lower and they will do everything to give you the rate "you deserve" rather than the rate you earned.
The other thing that I have found is that Agoda frequently has the best prices but Trivago does not consolidate Agoda prices in my search if I don't clear cookies. Sometimes when I do clear cookies Avago shows up. As best I can tell is that Avago has limits in Trivago not to show a quote if a user is making multiple inquiries or something. It is all an AI black box these days so nobody is going to tell you how it really works.
Bonus: In Chrome I use this to get to my site cookies: chrome://settings/content/all
Quick start simple answer: Clear your cookies and browser cache before search for travel deals. BTW, clearing your browser cache and cookies will automatically log you off so DO NOT login and do any searches with this method.
I'm not a traveler type but when I do I try to optimize price paid, especially for lodging.
We all have our own favorite search sites and online agencies, I get that. Here is a hack that I've used multiple times and it seems to work for hotels.
My consolidator of choice is Trivago. No special reason, they just seem to consolidate agency sites that I prefer (hotels, agoda, booking, etc.). When I'm searching for a room, usually many months in advance I keep a bookmark and search daily or as often as possible.
One thing I learned is to clear all of my cookies and browsing history for the Trivago and affiliated sites. Chrome makes this easy in settings, not sure about other browsers. What I have found is you sometimes (not always) get cheaper quotes "coming off the street" vs coming from a browser session where they know a lot about you. There must be an enticement attribute in their search AI or something. You will be logged off when you do this so that is OK, do not login when doing searches.
I've done experiments with search before and after clearing cookies and the results and prices are usually better and never worse. I have found that incognito mode doesn't make a difference, the main thing is cookies and browsing history.
Everyone is mentioning how expensive travel fares and lodging costs are. There are two reasons in my opinion. First is obvious, the dollar is strong, the economy is strong and people, especially young people are feeling positive about the economy in spite of all of the doomsday clickbait out there. Second is that pricing mechanisms are using very sophisticated AI these days, there is a huge B2B (business to business) sector out there using AI to optimize for the consumer surplus (area under the supply/demand curve where pricing can be increased without penalty to profits) so this is what we are seeing. It is just a classic optimization problem and AI and all of the VC money pouring into it now has enabled this to happen. It is effectively an arms race between us (with the $$ to spend) and the industry (trying to gather up as much of our $$ as possible). Don't fret, just be more vigilant and be aware this is happening.
What I have found is that it is OK to login just before paying or confirming your itinerary. At that point the price will not change. If you login before that the price can and almost always changes as that "teaser" rate you are getting is lower and they will do everything to give you the rate "you deserve" rather than the rate you earned.
The other thing that I have found is that Agoda frequently has the best prices but Trivago does not consolidate Agoda prices in my search if I don't clear cookies. Sometimes when I do clear cookies Avago shows up. As best I can tell is that Avago has limits in Trivago not to show a quote if a user is making multiple inquiries or something. It is all an AI black box these days so nobody is going to tell you how it really works.
Bonus: In Chrome I use this to get to my site cookies: chrome://settings/content/all