toomanybooks

rsteinmetz70112

The one aspect I worry about is to increase the price for a passenger who has demonstrated a need to fly a particular flight or route. Suppose for example you flew AAA -BBB regularly, the airline could start offering you higher fares (maybe only a few dollars at first) to test how much more you would be willing to spend. If you bought it then increase incrementally again. I don't think most people would notice, especially those who don't pay for their own tickets. This is especially possible for Southwest where there is no access to other sources of fare information.

JumboJet

After reading 100's of times, on this site, that it was impossible for airilnes to do this. Here we go. It's a crappy idea that probably won't work. I just hope the airlines know to send me the lowest price cause I'm most likely headed there anyway

NoStressHere

When they start bumping a price up to some travelers but not others, $hit is gonna hit the fan, big time. Not gonna happen.

Offering a discount will work okay, but not up-charging.

Not gonna happen.

Moving prices around due to demand is another story and they will continue to get better at that.

nsx

This would require Southwest to implement complicated software. I'm sure nothing could go wrong with that.

mile ho

I'm sure Moe, Larry and Curly can handle it.

rsteinmetz70112

Yeah but could Southwest's IT Department?

joshua362

I think where there is a direct buck to be made or saved using IT resources, they can step it up or pay to outsource it and do a proper job. When it's just for customer convenience & information, then I don't think they bother...

sonofzeus

Amazon could sell its expertise in dynamic pricing to the airlines, hotels, and rental cars companies. @:-)

pinniped

If an airline actually got caught doing this, it would be the biggest scandal in the industry - one even the Congresscritters they've paid the best would have a hard time defending. There would be Congressional hearings, a great deal of scrutiny on airline business practices, and probably new regulations - not to mention months of terrible PR that made the airlines long for the days when they only made the news for beating people up.

I don't believe it will happen. There are too many other ways to accomplish the goal via FFP promotions and other loyalty benefits.

I could easily see dynamic pricing becoming more sophisticated and more rapidly adjusting fares in response to demand across an entire route or set of routes (as opposed to simply fare buckets on a flight). But an algorithm that prices based upon the characteristics of the person initiating the query...that seems like a red line they won't cross. (I would hope.)

sdsearch

The problem this is that (excepting Southwest currently) it's possible to buy tickets on each airline at dozens of sites, each of which work differently. Yet these methods seems like they would have to be implemented on a specific site. So they could presumably be worked around just by going to a different site.

So unless airlines stop giving miles for tickets bought through OTAs (the way most hotel programs have done), I don't see how this would work, except for (as mentioned above) discounts for people with elite status (who are more likely perhaps to use the airline's own site to begin with).

Now, in the case of Southwest, I thought that one of the goals of the new reservation system would be to make their fares be bookable by travel agents. But if they do that, they give up hope of implementing anything like this (other than, again, for "targeted" discounts).

Btw, airlines have been "targeting" discounts to elite members for a while anyway, in that to a miles/points collectors bonus miles/points on a flight are more or less the equivalent of a discount. And airlines (including Southwest) have given bonus miles/points/credit on flights in certain situations for decades.

xliioper

The vast majority of "dynamic" pricing out there is simple "surge" based pricing, and not "targeted" at particular consumers as implied by the author of this article. This includes Uber, Lyft, Amazon, Disney, etc. -- Why 'dynamic' pricing based on real-time supply and demand is rapidly spreading. Amazon did mess around with targeted dynamic pricing back in 2000 on DVD sales, but has ended the practice. If you read the ATPCO paper at https://www.atpco.net/sites/default/...ry_updated.pdf, you will see they are looking at both the "surge" type of dynamic pricing, as well as targeted type dynamic pricing and that they recognize the potential backlash from consumers and regulators with employing targeted based systems.

sdsearch

The one simple "targeting" I've seen is targeted by time of booking.

I've seen multiple third-party hotel sites routinely put up discounted hotel rates at the end of the business day and take them away the next morning, but leave them up all weekend. Ie, they put up one rate during business hours, and another rate outside of business hours. The point is to target leisure travelers and not most business travelers with those discount rates, on the assumption that business travelers mostly book during business hours. (in these cases, I was looking at hotels in the same time zone as myself.)

whlinder

What's the real concern? That airlines will use the information they have to price more specifically towards specific passengers based on attributes and behavior?

The ability to charge different prices based on passenger attributes has been in place for decades. Military, Government, State Government, Child, Child with a seat, infant without a seat, infant with a seat, Military Child, Frequent Flyer (with a bunch of different classifications), Resident/National of a certain country, point of sale, airline employee, Clergy, senior citizen (different age classifications), bereavement, there are 100s of passenger attributes which can be used to control the price offered. Then there are corporate contracts (another passenger attribute) allowing for dynamic discounting of published fares and of course the whole side of inventory management. How is that not dynamic?

This is moving more towards dynamic offer generation and getting to more price points to better match the demand curve.

LOL who said it was impossible to do?

JumboJet

Dynamic Pricing & Private Browsing

Does your browsing history determine price?

Here is a couple to get you started. You will have to find the rest. I would tell you to check on almost any airline forum.