by creer on 1/13/25, 7:02 PM
The article is refreshing in its research and writing: the research is crude, testing just a very few alternatives - just enough for something to write about. And that's okay, this is not a scientific paper. And then the author collects a few quotes and does not dilute things too much. Good job.
I propose another workaround alternative that doesn't exist yet. A "multi-browser" which lets you browse and visually diff the web from different points of view. See the web from deep china, europe, Kansas City, San Francisco, Chrome, Firefox, daytime and nighttime, incognito, logged-in, etc all at once (modulo some time spreading for opsec or something) so we can get back to peace and what matters: booking a bloody hotel room or reading a magazine article without making a project of it.
by janalsncm on 1/14/25, 9:37 PM
Dynamic pricing is the future of everything. If consumers are willing to pay 1.5x, you are leaving money on the table by only charging x. In fact in a fully optimized system, once consumers have all of their wants and needs met, they will have zero dollars left over. (Expensive end of life care tends to have similar results today.)
NPR did a piece on it last year which to me came off a bit too cheerful.
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1197958433/dynamic-pricing-gr...
Using only time of day is fairly primitive, though. We can do better. With facial recognition, we can probably personalize prices to the penny.
by scarface_74 on 1/14/25, 8:09 PM
My wife and I travel a lot as a hobby. The first rule is never use a third party portal for hotels or flights
by jerlam on 1/13/25, 5:58 PM
Hotels generally dislike third-party booking sites, because they're just skimming off profits while offering a worse service, so they usually offer to match all third-party quotes.
I wonder if a single computer with a VPN could generate screenshots of those discounted quotes for the sole purpose of price-matching.
by jp42 on 1/14/25, 7:18 PM
I had theory long time ago that booking hotel or airlines tickets from mac used to be more expensive than windows. Many of my friend also experienced as well. Its just theory so don't know if others had similar experience.
by htrp on 1/13/25, 5:24 PM
> Cavis explained that, “Partners also have the flexibility to create specific promotional rates, such as country rates or mobile rates, which are designed to offer discounts, not charge higher prices.”
> The implication is that the expensive rate that San Franciscans see is the “real” price — while Kansas City and Phoenix travelers are getting a discount.
Uber and their 'flash promos' come to mind here.
by PopAlongKid on 1/13/25, 4:00 PM
The article mentions that booking sites may come up with ways to neutralize the use of VPNs to circumvent geolocation-based pricing. I rarely book rooms in advance (most of my stays away from home are in motels on road trips), and I almost always prefer booking directly with the hotel when I do book in advance. I wonder to what extent fingerprinting the computer will defeat the use of VPN in this situation?
I also wonder if/when AirBnB/VRBO may start doing a similar thing? But I guess that would involve the private property owner participating in the scheme.
by yumraj on 1/14/25, 7:46 PM
I wonder if this happen while using Costco Travel or AmEx travel etc.?
What about travel agents? Do they also get price discriminated against depending on where they are?
This can lead to startup ideas as in book-from service which scans all the zip codes and helps book from the cheapest one.
by teractiveodular on 1/14/25, 11:39 PM
There's one important factor this experiment is not controlling for: inventory. If user A gets deep enough into the purchase flow, the hotel will place a hold on their room for 10 or so minutes, and that room will not be available when user B does a search. If pricing is dynamic, and for these hotels it obviously is, user B may well be shown a higher price regardless of geography.
This applies even if the experimenter is not going any further than checking top level prices, because other people are booking actual hotels and thus impacting prices all the time.
by iforgot22 on 1/14/25, 10:08 PM
I've heard this before but haven't seen it myself. Seems very easy to test.
Edit: "I compared hotel room rates for five different sites: Kayak, Booking.com, Trivago, Expedia and Hotels.com. The tests were all performed on Dec. 11, 2024, within a two-hour span, and involved searching for a hotel room in Manhattan For Valentine’s Day weekend, Feb. 14 to 16, 2025."
Haven't used those before, so that could be it. Also suspect that it's very specific to the hotel and won't show up for mine. Anyway I'll try it.
by xkcd-sucks on 1/13/25, 5:59 PM
I'm taking an introductory economics course right now, and was surprised to find out that even hardcover books are a form of price discrimination: The manufacturing costs aren't significantly higher than paperback, but "enthusiasts" will buy them at inflated prices. I'm starting to think that like 80% of product diversity is really just pricing discrimination in disguise.
by bufferoverflow on 1/15/25, 7:43 AM
There's no such thing as "overcharging". Market pays whatever market is willing to pay. These sites can charge a million dollars per booking if they want, as long as there's a person willing to pay.
This isn't some crazy situation without competition, like charging US military $50 for a can of coke.
by SergeAx on 1/18/25, 4:13 AM
Currently, I have a habit of checking the price on the hotel's website. Oftentimes, I could get a better deal with "member login" (mostly just Google OAuth) or promo codes posted on the front page.
However, many hotels use external systems for booking and payment handling. I wonder how long those systems will take to start offering the same tricks as big platforms.
by walrus01 on 1/14/25, 8:18 PM
I would venture a theory that at least
some smart people at 3rd party booking websites (expedia/booking.com type things) are making use of RFC8805 geolocation data published by peoples' last mile ISPs, for the netblock they're coming from, in addition to whatever 3rd party geolocation data feeds they're buying from services such as maxmind.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8805
by m101 on 1/14/25, 11:12 PM
As with discriminatory pricing in airlines, the benefits of discriminatory prices will flow, in part, to those who pay the lowest prices (and in part to shareholders).
by briandear on 1/14/25, 8:11 PM
Going to play devils advocate here: San Francisco has a very high cost of living so is this any different than charging people different tax rates because of their income? Geolocation is a sloppy proxy for income, but statistically, a person in San Francisco makes a lot more money than a person in Kansas City.
(I don’t agree with the practice, but I am also opposed to progressive taxation as well.)
by seydor on 1/14/25, 9:35 PM
If we were back in the time of travel agents, would it be OK for them to charge more because they are in the area?
by jessepasley on 1/14/25, 9:39 PM
What's the difference between this and remote work pay being based on local cost of living?
by MrPatan on 1/14/25, 11:38 PM
You mean "hotel booking sites offer discounts to non-bay area customers", surely?
by lazylizard on 1/15/25, 2:16 PM
theres 2 kinds of hotels?
hotels that overcharge bay area customers, and hotels that overcharge other customers?
by xbar on 1/14/25, 11:32 PM
Goodbye booking sites.
by sleepybrett on 1/14/25, 8:27 PM
parasitic middlemen
by DrNosferatu on 1/14/25, 7:12 PM
They do it because they can:
Booking.com operates as a de-facto monopoly.