Re:Consumers Are Becoming Wise to Your Nudge
by flukus on Thursday June 27, 2019 @02:30AM
(#20292191)
Last time I worked in this industry (over a decade ago) sites like expedia didn't work through a GDS but hotels would explicitly put available stock directly into them, if they had 10 rooms availble they might put 5 on expedia, 2 on another site and 1 each on 3 smaller sites. So expedia only has to check it's own data and the prices typically didn't fluctuate intra-day. I was working on software to automate most of this process.
The middleman isn't checking availability every time because there's a cost to ask the carrier. And if you ask too much they will rate limit or deny you which means you get no availability.
The middleman is a price aggregation person, and tries to find rates and routes using all the rules the carriers specify.
Sure you can buy tickets directly from AA or UA. But what if you want to fly a connection that has both. Do you think AA wants to sell seats on someone's else plane?