FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Need FT community help to review AutoSlash.com
Old Jun 9, 2010, 5:12 am
  #25  
AutoSlash
Company Representative - AutoSlash and HotelSlash
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: autoslash.com | hotelslash.com
Posts: 5,643
Right now, you have the ability to enter in one discount code (CDP, AWD, BCD, etc.) and one coupon per company, up to a max of 5 per query. This is a limitation of the Sabre back-end we are currently using. It could change down the road.

So basically for a given search, we need to figure out which 5 to apply to hopefully show the best results. We're constantly optimizing the software to try to "guess" better on which combination of codes will give the lowest rates.

There are many nuances and challenges with this. Some examples are:

- When you apply an Alamo coupon, the discount gets taken right off the total, and the discounted rate is what you will actually pay. This is different than Avis where the coupon gets applied, but the actual discount is not reflected in your total, but rather gets taken off at the counter. This can make Avis seem more expensive than Alamo for a given reservation even though the Avis reservation may be discounted further. Trust me when I say that this favors Alamo, and we see a difference in our booking breakdown.

- Some vendors are not in some locations, so we need to optimize our software to take this into account. An example that comes to mind is the NYC area airports. Alamo is not present at JFK, LGA, EWR. Right now, our software still tries to apply an Alamo coupon, thus using up one of those 5 valuable slots I mentioned earlier. This results in getting back less than 5 "Discounted" columns. Obviously we'd want to substitute Alamo for National or some other vendor and maximize the chance that we'd show a low rate for an alternate company. We actually have the mapping done for which companies are present each airport, but we just haven't gotten around to making the code change yet to take it into account. Soon we will do this though, and it will be that much more useful.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of what goes on behind the scenes. There really isn't any "secret sauce" per se. It's basically taking the concepts that savvy people around here have used for quite a while (manually), and putting some automated rules around it and executing it well. This way, you guys don't have to waste your time endlessly searching for discount codes and applying them via trial and error to get a better rate, as well as to help others who may be less savvy at playing "car rental discount roulette".

Any further questions, just ask!

Originally Posted by dstan
Thanks, baseline. What about being able to enter multiple codes and coupons? Ultimately, when you get the tracking feature activated, that'll be most useful for me.

OTOH, Mrs. dstan, Sr. has already taken advantage of the much lower $181 rate at Thrifty that Autoslash returned. ^

Last edited by AutoSlash; Jun 9, 2010 at 6:08 am
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