Second Update: Hugh has given us unlimited invites (thanks Hugh!) and a process for making this easy. I’ll have this done asap.
Most likely you are painfully aware of how bizarre and seemingly inscrutable the pricing schemes are for airline travel. One day you might get a fare from SF to Boston for $400, the next it’s $335, and the day after that it’s $500. Why? Well, airlines have shitloads of data about historical pricing; they understand the supply and demand curves for every market, and they know when they need to sell more seats, boost margins, or compete to win business. They take advantage of all that data to push a price at you that suits them, and they’re very, very good at leveraging algorithms to drive maximum revenue. It’s frustrating as hell to use an online service like Expedia to try to beat the airlines at their own game – it simply isn’t the right interface. Not to mention, Expedia’s real customers are the travel companies – not you.
I got a chance to talk to Farecast founder Hugh Crean earlier last week, right before I penned this missive on not being able to do reviews. And in fact, this is not a review of Farecast, as much as I wish I had time for that. However, Hugh did spend a few minutes showing me around the site, and I found what it does really interesting, though for different reasons that perhaps others might.
You can sign up for the private beta on the homepage, it’ll be out later in the year. The basic premise is neat – Farecast pays attention to the market price of all airline fares out of particular cities (it only does Boston and Seattle for now) at all times (it uses an industry data feed that, unfortunately, does not include Southwest). It then uses this data to help forecast when the right time might be for you to buy your ticket (and get the best price). In short, it’s a rip off detector for flights. Farecast leverages the power of data to put you back in charge, or at least more in charge.
What Farecast does is shift the power of information back into the consumer’s hands, and that’s why I like it. I remember when the web was young and the first car buying sites were up and running. Dealers scrambled for that early business, and I bought two cars off the web by forcing dealers in the Bay Area to compete for my business. It really felt like the web was going to change the dynamic of who was in charge in a car buying transaction – because I could force dealers to their best price, I was always going to get the best price. It felt like this would be the model in most large transactions, like travel, loans, etc. Price would stabilize, and folks would differentiate on service, relationship, and approach.
But something funny happened on our way to internet mediated bliss: the big companies figured out how to game our demand. Dealers realized they can make more profit if they cooperate and withhold pricing information from the aggregators, and the aggregators got into bed with the supply side of the equation (if you think AutoByTel or Expedia is on your side, you’re kidding yourself). Nowhere is this more true that in how an airline prices its tickets.
I like how Farecast puts the consumer back in control of the data. The interface is very slick and the idea is quite promising. So I very much wish Farecast well, and I’d love to hear about other services which disrupt other markets where access to data is so one sided.
Hugh has given me 25 invitations to the private beta, if you’re interested, let me know in comments below.
Update: Hugh has emailed me and upped my invite limit to 150. But give me some time to get them out to you….
I too got an invite to Farecast but the fact that it is only useful for flights originating SEA or BOS at the moment really kills its usefulness for me, I’m based in CLE.
Love the idea but until their originating airport list opens up a little I am unable to see what everyone is raving about.
FIRST!
John, I want to try it. My fake email is alexthegreatmma@hotmail.com
I travel to apparel trade shows all the time. This would be great.
Would love a beta invite-thx
Would appreciate an invite…thanks!!
I would be delighted to try this out. The powers of the internet to aggregate data and use it to foster competition by empowering customers has long been an interest of mine. I have previously analysed on http://www.mindthis.net how this is true for airline punctuality.
Thank you.
An invite would be great!
thanks
[sigh] Now, if only someone would do the same sort of thing for the Web.. wouldn’t that be a great thing? Imagine a search engine where, after typing your query, you got all sorts of information about trends on the web related to your query: how many new pages on your topic have been added to the web in the past n days? What is the distribution over other query terms that are related/relevant to your query terms? In what clusters do many of the returned results belong?
At the moment, all the big search engines cling bitterly to this dogma about users being lazy and users only wanting to see “the one best” result at the top of the list. They don’t understand that sometimes we the searchers want to see the big picture.
As a result, I feel kinda like John.. the web was supposed to change the dynamic of who was in charge.. but it ended up being coopted by big companies. Today when I search for anything of any potential commercial interest on, say, Google, I feel like I am being held hostage by the advertisers in the right column, and the SEOs in the left column. Even if they are white-hat SEOs, they are very good at what they do, and they work for commercial interests, not my for interests. My ability to “take back the web” by controlling the flow of information.. by getting all the good statistics and visualizations and overviews of my topic area.. unmitigated by SEO and advertising.. currently does not exist in any of the major search engines.
It is nice to see yet another company try to shift the balance of power back to the users. I hope this succeeds.
If you have extra invites I’d love one! Keep up the great work on the blog and, as always, thanks for the scoop.
Would love an invite, John. My email is asmythie / ureach com. Thanks
I would absolutely love to try out that beta. Thanks in any case!
would love an invite. thx for the update.
Hi John. I would love to try out farecast.
John,
I’d love on- I would think the guys over at the freakonomics blog would be fascinated by this as well…
http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/
Thanks,
Josh
I would love an invite to Farecast if there are any left.
Thanks,
Jason
I’d love one if possible – thank you.
An invitation to try out Farecast would be great! I have experience forecasting retail sales so it would be very interesting to try out a product forecasting airline prices.
How funny, I was just checking this out yesterday. I would love an invite John, looks like a promising addition for the frequent travel group. Speaking of, have you tried http://www.cfares.com? Another interesting premise.
Best,
Hank
would very much love to get a beta invite. i’m always looking for a good and new interface.
Hi John, don’t know if you are all out of invites. But if you have an extra, I would love one. Thank you!
It would be great to get an invite, I would be interested form an investors standpoint.
Gotta move fast around here. I’d appreciate an invite. Thanks!
If there are any left I’d love an invite. BTW, not sure if you’ve seen farecompare.com but it seems to have some similar elements.
I’d love an invite, please send one my way. Much appreciated!
I’d love to give this a whirl as I travel quite a bit in the fall and am based in BOS. If there’s an invite, I’d be grateful.
Got anymore invites? Thanks!
I’d love an invite!
I’d love an invite. Thanks.
I’m very interested! I’ve wanted something like this for a long time. The predictor portion looks fantastic.
I just purchased a ticket yesterday, but I’d still like to see how this works. Hit me up!
Yay! An invitation to level the markets! I’d love one!
John, I’m definitely interested in the beta.
Thanks,
Nick
Would love an invite. I have followed pricing on the routes I travel, would love to see how my qualitative perception matches up with this data.
This reminds of a course run by a professor at Imperial College (John Darlington – it was one of his research interests). The idea was that the internet acted a little like a financial market but you had to be really careful about asymetric information (i.e. the seller knows more about the product than the buyer). It sounds like this site would balance out the information available to buyers and sellers in the market. Which in theory would improve market efficiency and prices would be closer to the actual value to the buyers and sellers.
I could use an invite if you have any left. thanks.
John,
I’d like to have an invite too if you have any left.. 🙂
Thanks,
–Nathan
I’d like an invite if you have not run out 🙂
John, I’d really appreciate an invite if there are any left!
I’d love an invite if any remain!
OK, you’ve probably got a long waiting list by now but just in case there’s any extra spots, I’d love to check this out.
I’d love an invite as well. I’m from Boston originally, and this would be helpful for me to visit old friends and family more often.
Please send an invite – this looks great. Reminds me of Robert Metcalf’s “flyspy.com” which was one of the most popular mashups at Mashup Camp in February.
I hate being 43rd in line for something that only goes to 25!
Nice post John. Good luck to the guys at Farecast
This looks fantastic. It’s infuriating to browse for airfare because searches through Expedia and similar sites take so long because the flight information they analyze is so vast. However, by playing around a great deal at various travel sites (and by being willing to leave a few days before or after your ideal date) you can often save around $100 and somtimes more.
I hate the way airlines jack up ticket prices for international tickes for US customers. Try pricing a round-trip ticket from NYC to London and back, and then do it the other way around. The ticket that starts in the UK will cost 25-40% less! This is the same for all international destinations when departing from the US. I think the assumption is that Americans are just willing to pay more for airfare.
I travel frequently, so a tool like this is great interest to me. If you have any more invitations, I’d love one.
Thanks very much! I’m traveling to London at the end of this month.
Please send me an invite–thanks!
I’d appreciate an invite, if possible. Thanks!
Hey, if you have any more invites, I’d really appreciate checking this out. Thanks, Fred.
I’d love to check this site out – I’ve been looking for just this information recently. Thanks for the update on this!
I’d love an invite John.
Is anyone else skeptical about the real advantage this ‘disruption’ has for the consumer? Seems like a slick marketing gimmick to me.
if you still have an invite, i’d love one 🙂
SSShhhhhh!!!!! We need to keep this to ourselves! If everyone starts using this then prices will reach some sort of equilibrium and then we won’t get sweet deals anymore. Obviously the airlines can’t just have cheap rates for everyone (noticed how many airlines went bankrupt the last 5 years?) so we need other people to pay the high prices so we can pay the low ones.