Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies - Expedia.ca price differences on AS flights

Hi,

Just wanted to share that expedia.ca sells some Alaska Airlines (AS) flights at a much higher price and others at a slightly lower price compared to buying directly from AS. Is there a system behind that?

I was looking for one way flights from Sacramento SMF to the Vancouver area, either BLI or YVR (or YXX). Alaska Airlines had nice offers to BLI, $121-145. Flying to YVR was priced at $178.01.

Since I pay with a Canadian credit card I wanted to pay in C$ and went to expedia.ca. There, the very same flights, same flight numbers, etc. cost ~174 C$ - regardless if the destination is BLI or YVR.

What is a small savings for flights to YVR is a hefty markup for flights to BLI. How come?

Hey, I live in Victoria so I use Alaska Airlines quite often. I've found that prices can vary quite a lot between .com and .ca sites. The good news with Alaska is that they just recently announced a best rate guarantee, so maybe you can use that to your advantage.

What I've noticed most though is that there are huge variations in car rental prices between expedia.com and expedia.ca, both higher and lower on the Canadian side, depending on the phase of the moon or some other factors I don't know a lot about.

Interesting. Would anyone here have an idea why that is?

Arbitrage. Not sure why but it definitely happens. Check out this example from a couple years back: http://www.hoteldealsrevealed.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=215&t=196

Some could be web fares that you can only get through the airline's site. Many of HA's cheap interisland flights are also sold like this.

What I've noticed most though is that there are huge variations in car rental prices between expedia.com and expedia.ca, both higher and lower on the Canadian side, depending on the phase of the moon or some other factors I don't know a lot about.
They are run by different companies under some sort of contract, at least in part. Expedia.ca regularly has excellent deals in the US with Dollar and Budget. When I booked directly with Budget, under the price guarantee I claimed the much lower price on Expedia.ca. The response from Budget was what their deal doesn't apply to special contracts. I have used Expedia.ca many times for car rentals with these contract prices - they allow cancellation without penalty but they do require payment when booking that is refundable and it's never clear. If you look around, you can often find out what is going on. At one time, and maybe even now, Toureast Travels operated some of the Expedia.ca stuff.