Today I was advised not to buy flight tickets on a weekend, but wait to until mid-week as they’d be cheaper?
Not cheaper because of the day of actual departure, because of the day of purchase.
Colleague swore that travel for the same dates by plane would be cheaper if I bought tickets on a Wednesday instead of a Friday/Saturday.
Is that bullshit or is that real? And why?
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As been explained above, they use dynamic pricing, often also called revenue management. So there are a lot of back end reasons for price changes based on things as basic as historical information based on demand, events that are happening that would draw more or less people to a destination, and others much more hi-tech based on if you’ve been searching that particular fight a lot.
Essentially, since individual flights and hotel stays cannot be sold after the date passes they try to maximize either the price, occupancy, and ideally both. So they have various pricing models to “sell to the right guest, at the right price”. They have various different prices at different times to maximize revenue and the number of tickets/rooms sold.
Essentially they’re trying to get the most money they can from each guest from the various market segments.
That’s why the common logic of booking earlier is still a decent rule of thumb. Basically rewarding people who book early with a lower price, and as it drives up demand you can charge subsequent guests a higher price (though with all the data companies have, it’s not as solid a tactic as it used to be).
As a side note, one of my least favorite terms in the hotel industry (I’m sure others do too) is call it the ‘Best Available Rate’. I mean, it is, but it is for the company as it’s the price set with no discounts or other perks. In hotels we call it ‘rack rate’ internally.
Using a not totally honest example of revenue management is literally the big marketing point for travel companies where they show two guests paying a different price for the same room on the same day. It has nothing to do with the travel company negotiating a better price. You could have two guests who booked through Expedia paying different prices. They don’t set the price for the room (the revenue managers do that) they are just a useful channel to help increase occupancy, even though they take a decent commission for selling the room on your behalf.
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