Google Flights today is releasing a new feature that will help travelers better determine the right time to book. Rolling out this week, the company is
This is going to fuck itself up. The predictions are based on what has happened before this information was made easily available. Making it easily available will change booking habits, and thus the prices on offer at different times. Especially as the airlines can (try to) anticipate an avalanche of bookings at particular timepoints and so know that they won’t necessarily need to lower prices to fill the flights.
Fortunately, most travel (in the US) is tied to school schedules and I don’t think this will impact those travel patterns or routes. Perhaps shorter weekend trips will see some changes though but I think most people have a decent sense of good prices vs bad even without this type of enhancement from google flights.
It’ll be like when everyone started using Google maps and now they just drive 40 mph through the neighborhoods instead of waiting an extra minute on a major road.
But there are times where many people really want or don’t want to travel to an specific location because of the weather, events, etc. There is a natural higher demand for some dates, i.e. Christmas, etc., while others have lower demand, i.e., summer in some places.
I suspect people that travel without time constrains will be most benefited, ofc, but don’t underestimate the number of people who travel with time constraints.
This is going to fuck itself up. The predictions are based on what has happened before this information was made easily available. Making it easily available will change booking habits, and thus the prices on offer at different times. Especially as the airlines can (try to) anticipate an avalanche of bookings at particular timepoints and so know that they won’t necessarily need to lower prices to fill the flights.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
Hopefully it does fuck itself up. Enough for airlines to abandon algorithmic pricing rather than try to outsmart Google
thats how it will pan out: google is just adding an extra step to flight booking: making it booking with extra steps.
Fortunately, most travel (in the US) is tied to school schedules and I don’t think this will impact those travel patterns or routes. Perhaps shorter weekend trips will see some changes though but I think most people have a decent sense of good prices vs bad even without this type of enhancement from google flights.
It’s not about when they fly, it’s about when they book the tickets.
It’ll be like when everyone started using Google maps and now they just drive 40 mph through the neighborhoods instead of waiting an extra minute on a major road.
But there are times where many people really want or don’t want to travel to an specific location because of the weather, events, etc. There is a natural higher demand for some dates, i.e. Christmas, etc., while others have lower demand, i.e., summer in some places. I suspect people that travel without time constrains will be most benefited, ofc, but don’t underestimate the number of people who travel with time constraints.
This isn’t about when they travel. It’s about when they book the flights.