Updated: On FareCast: Rip Me Off No More

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…

Farecast Logo

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.

Farecast1

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….

434 thoughts on “Updated: On FareCast: Rip Me Off No More”

  2. Great intro ,I would love to see how this develops and if Farecast can continue to get all the data from the big airline companies to make this useful for the end consumer.
    i would love an invite!

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  7. If you by any chance have an invite left, I’d really appreciate it.

    Love your work, as always.

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  10. Hi, if you still have an invite, I would love to check one out. Thank you for the excellent, informative blog!

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  12. as a seattlite – would love an invite if you still have them. thanks for this and a great blog.

    Reply

  17. This sounds great John. not only I wish them well in the US market, I also hope they become big enough to take on International markets.

    I would love to try them out when you get around to this comment. Thanks.

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  18. I would be happy to have an invite. Dennis Doughty, disposable email of farecast_beta at k39 dot net.

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  19. Thanks John for the mini-review and I would love an invite if there are still some left. As a frequent traveller I too am completely sick of being forced to do a dog and pony show for the airlines EVERY time I need to book a flight.

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  24. I’d like one of those beta thingies too, if you have any left. I’m lucky enough to live near Seattle.

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  36. John,
    Do you know what FareCast’s plan is for making money? I would certainly like to see a good plan–for their sake and ours. We, as consumers, could really use a service like this.

    And if you have any invites left, I would love one. Thanks!

    Reply

  37. Would love an invite John.

    I am actually in the travel vertical and I totally agree with your comments on supplier-aggregator relationships.

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  38. Airline pricing strategy has long been one of my pet peeves- I’d love to see this service in action if you can spare an invite. Thanks

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  40. I’d love an invite if you have some left. My disposable email address is bsas-cju7@xemaps.com. I am interested to see whether they are good at telling you whether prices are about to go down. It seems to me that the standard thing is for prices to go up as you approach departure, making it advantageous to buy sooner. The info they could provide that would be useful would be to let you know if it would be better to postpone your purchase a little while (and how long). thanks

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  48. John: I’d really appreciate an invite. I know a lot about the industry, I use to work for a large online travel company. Thanks!

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  49. It will be interesting to see how this will couple with fare search (e.g. FareChase, Kayak, Mobissimo) to not only predict when the low fare hits, but also go out and search at that time (and, ideally, then send me an email notification).

    I would love an invitation to the Beta if you have one to give. Thanks

    Reply

  50. I might be too late for an invite, but I’d like one if it’s available. Thanks for the tip in any case.

    Reply

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