frobozzelectric

am i imagining things or do airline booking apps somehow consider your detected location in determining prices it will quote you?


i have been canvassing for MNL CNX MNL for some time, when doing so in the philippines TG is the better deal over air asia, now that i am in KUL air asia is now the lower cost option, same exact dates.

i also noticed the thai app redirected me to a malaysian site for booking (shows a malaysian flag and all) and a slightly different interface over what i see from the philippines.

is this an issue which can also be affected by net neutrality?

in your experience, which airline/country of detected location give the best prices?

maybe a vpn with variable detected location is a good idea.

whew, yet another factor to consider for the hobby. i love it!

sbm12

Point of Sale (POS) restrictions and variability is not new. Fares for the same trip can vary in price based on where it is sold. And in some cases (namely Venezuela right now) tickets cannot be sold at all for some airlines.

frobozzelectric

i learn something new all the time in ft.

while i think it is a bit of a [bad] move on the part of the airline i must admit it just makes it more interesting to me.

FirstInFlight

This is common - particularly in Asia. Intra-China fares are usually much cheaper on Chinese sites. It also helps to delete cookies. Most major players have multiple point origin sites. If you are booking on an airlines site, Google the airline name and Hong Kong site for example.

The​​​​The same goes for rental cars - often cheaper when booked from the rental company page for a different country.

Mr. Vker

How about based on your computer type? Orbitz was presenting higher prices to users of Macs.... (5 year old article, but I remember the story.)

http://business.time.com/2012/06/26/...-to-mac-users/

frobozzelectric

probably uses the reasoning that if one belongs to a well known high spender demographic then one must be charged more.

sbm12

And you remember it wrong. Orbitz was presenting more expensive options to those users as "recommended" booking options, but the prices for any given property were the same across all OSen.
No evidence of this.

Yes, but whether you can use the alternate site to book or not varies by airline and billing country of the CC used to create the booking.

Mr. Vker

You are correct in that it wont say the same room etc are priced differently, but it would show different inventory. Higher priced to mac users. I was incorrect in stating the same item would be priced differently, however its still very misleading.