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Photo by Humphrey Muleba on Unsplash
I only realised this recently when my sister was trying to book a hotel room and the price kept going up. Upon doing some investigative work (on Google) I found the following:
1) Discussion on Travel at StackExchange
"Yes, these tactics do work. I have experienced, for example, the rising price effect when refreshing a browser window with an itinerary already listed. After the refresh, the price has increased. I opened another browser (Chrome), did the same search and the price was the initial lower price. I refreshed, and the price went up to match that of the original browser (Safari).
If I searched a site or airline site located in a specific country from another country, the price was higher. If I used my VPN to appear as though I am in the country, the price was lower.
This has occurred on Airline specific sites, like AA.com, aircanada.com, flychinaeastern.com, airasia.com, etc., as well as search engines like vayama.com, hipmunk.com. If the price itself hasn't gone up, what happens is that the seat I was looking at supposedly sold out, so I had to look for a different seat, or date. But as I said, doing the same search with a different browser would always return that initial lower price.
That said, this is a lot of rigamarole to go through, and most prices increases were only a couple hundred dollars. If you consider that you might spend several days doing this, you will experience a genuine price increase of more than a couple hundred dollars related to how close you are to the departure date.
I fly several times a year and this always occurs. Of course, my itinerary doesn't change much so I recognize a good deal when it pops up, and just buy it rather than do all the above."
2. I also came across this post by a Reddit contributor (Xasf):
"Unlike an individual airline, an OTA (online travel agent such as kayak, expedia, etc) doesn't care if you are turned off by the price of a specific ticket: They can always offer you a better alternative (from other airlines) and probably still keep you as a paying customer in the end. So they may modify their prices if they sense you have a preference for a certain airline or flight over others (because it means you might not be 100% price sensitive in that instance).
An airline, on the other hand, would never risk turning away a prospective returning customer in this way because they simply don't have anything else to sell if you don't like their ticket.
So the TLDR (too long; didn't read) of the whole thing is: It's OK to use OTAs for "window shopping", but always try to book direct from the airline website. Chances are you will get a better deal either in terms of the price, or additional services / benefits."
In conclusion, whilst opinions and results differ on this matter and it may not make any difference on some sites, I would want to know that I've taken sufficient precaution to ensure I'm getting the best pricing for my flight and accommodation (we all know how pricey they cant get). Of course this is only possible if I had the time to play detective before my travels!
Tip : How to open a Incognito / Private Window
Opening Incognito window in Chrome
1) Open Chrome then press Ctrl+Shift+N
2) Right click on Chrome icon and select "New Incognito Window"
Opening Private window in Opera
1) Open Chrome then press Ctrl+Shift+N
2) Right click on Opera icon and select "New Private Window"
Opening Private window in Firefox
1) Open Firefox then press Ctrl+Shift+P
2) Right click on Firefox icon and select "New Private Window"
