Do travel sites use cookies to dupe you into paying more?

That’s the explosive accusation made by some travelers who book their trips online. They pull up a price quote on a travel site, but five minutes later the fare has doubled. Are airlines, car rental companies and hotels using cookies to track their movements and kick out a higher price?

I’ve investigated this alleged bait-and-switch tactic in the past, and the results were inconclusive. But reader Daniel Luby says he has no doubts that it’s being done.

When you do an online search for a flight a tracking cookie is placed on your computer.

If you do not buy during your initial search but come back 10 minutes later and do the same search again, the quoted price will be higher. This is because the tracking cookie tells them that you previously searched for the same flight and you are shopping for a better price elsewhere.

If online sites are doing this, they are being very careful about it. In earlier tests, I tried to duplicate this bait-and-switch routine, but couldn’t.

Which isn’t to say it’s not happening. A sophisticated cookie-tracking program would be practically undetectable, intentionally generating higher and lower prices at random so that no pattern can be detected. But like a Las Vegas slot machine, the odds would always favor the house.

Reader David Smith says it’s happened to him, but only on flights that are close to full.

I check a flight, then check some others, but when we go back, the cost is higher.

The way to beat this is to sign on through another browser (e.g., switch from IE to Firefox or another machine e.g., your laptop instead of your home computer.) I did this and got the original rate and booked it.

Luby says there’s another work-around:

You have to delete all tracking cookies before starting a new search. I have found that this applies to searches on Expedia, Orbitz and some of the airline Web sites.

Have you experienced any suspicious behavior while shopping for airfares, car rental rates or hotel prices online? Do you think a clever cookie-tracking application was behind it?

Whether these programs exist or not, I think Luby’s advice is solid. Clear out your cookies or browse in “privacy” mode to avoid any run-ins with the Cookie Monster.

  • Bob

    I’m guessing this is nothing more than paranoia on the part of Daniel Luby. I don’t have any information one way or the other whether or not the travel sites are doing this, and it is certainly possible for a travel site to do this, but it doesn’t explain the following question:

    WHY would a travel site, one that thinks you are shopping around for the best price, suddenly RAISE the price for you? If a travel site is trying to sell you a ticket, and that travel site jacks up the price, would that not send you to a competitor?

    Maybe someone can explain to me the business case here, from the point of view of the travel site.

  • http://www.utturkar.org Abhi

    My own experience with Delta Airlines website is similar. I often book international tickets for myself and my family. Once I know the dates of travel, I keep checking back for a reasonable fare and interestingly, it has happened to me too. I check on Delta.com, they show me a price (say $1400). I then go to Kayak.com and find out that Delta flights (still $1400) are more suitable although not the cheapest. So I click on the Delta fare link through Kayak and voila! The fare has vanished. It says it is no more available and asks me to pick another one. I then try to get the same fare through Delta.com (just 5 minutes after the first time) and fares go up as high as $1530 for the same flight. I come back a few days later and fares are back to $1400. I had a similar experience with Northwest. So far only Southwest has been very fair on these issues.

    I believe airlines are just trying out how desperate the purchaser is to get the same flight combination and on their terms and conditions. There doesn’t seem a more complicated strategy behind such actions. Even 10% of the buyers fall for the trick and airlines would have higher profits than selling more tickets at lower prices.

  • Chicky

    I think it’s based on the thought, “Well, since you didn’t think we offered you a good enough fare the first time you looked, we’ll just jack up the price as your penalty for not going with us in the first place.”

    Of course, good sense would dictate the websites lower the fares by a couple of bucks on a return visit, as an enticement to buy. However, we are discussing an industry where good sense doesn’t always prevail. You can draw your own conclusions.

  • Jonathan

    Absolutely true! I’ve discovered the phenom myself, and have proven it several times. From now on, when I go to a site for a quotation, etc., if I return to purchase, I always clean out all temp files, cookies, etc. It usually works. In fact, if I don’t sign in, and the site thinkgs I’m “new meat”, I sometimes get a much, much lower rate (especially at Hotwire). Sort of like a dealer offering a free sample… once you’re hooked, they know you’ll come back for more.

  • Drew

    Bob–
    imagine this–you are looking for a flight. You are not taking notes, but ‘remember’ that Site A has a lower price. Then, you go back to Site A, but the price is now higher than it was before–but the human brain is notoriously lagging in short-term memory, so you don’t ‘remember’ that this price is now higher than Site B was showing..

    Of course, all bets are off now, due to all the ‘add-on’ fees involved..

  • Sid

    I’ve had this happen to me when I booked for an intra-Europe flight on NWA.com

    I belive this 100%, it does happen at times, so its best ALWAYS, I mean ALWAYS delete your cookies, temp files, etc before getting ready to book and pay.

  • Sue

    This summer I bought tickets for a June trip from Chicago to St. Thomas for my husband and me. It was a quickly planned trip. I found that if I wanted two tickets from American Airlines, the price was $75 more expensive per person. So I bought one ticket on one computer and bought the other one on a different computer and it worked out. How crazy is that?

  • http://www.wanderlustandlipstick.com Beth Whitman

    I had heard about this awhile ago and did a test myself, using two different computers to check and re-check rates. I found that there was no change.

    Though I’m just tech-savvy enough to know this is possible, I chalk this particular thing up to urban myth.

    Oh, and why would we even think that the airlines are smart enough to implement such technology???

    Beth

  • Jasper

    I have suspected this too. Airlines will undoubtedly argue that ticket pricing changes minute to minute due to availability and whatever else fancies them.

    A thing that I am sure of that travel sites track is your IP address. In fact, this becomes more and more common even for regular search engines. They taylor to your past behavior. This is quite annoying if you found a good link on one place (say at work), and want to look it up at home (where your search history is different due to your girl-friends pink elephants collection).

    I am not happy with this development. Search engines say that they are giving you a better product by tailoring to your preferences. On the other hand, what realistically happens is that you end up in a virtual bubble that you can’t get out of anymore. Does not sound good to me.

    Finally, on the reason of a price increase. A company may do a quick check out there on it’s cheapest competition and increase the price to nearly matching, squeezing a couple of bucks more out of you. I am not sure if this would constitute collusion.

  • SS

    Disclosure: I used to work for one of these online travel sites, and in my recent past, was a software engineer who worked on maintaining their website.

    From my experience of how things work, I can say it is not a bait and switch tactics, but more to do with how the site gets its inventory – from GDSes like Worldspan, Sabre, Amadeus, etc. Since these services charge per search, and for the travel site, not every search results in a sale, what the site does is cache search results and fares for the most popular routes, and displays those fares. This cache is updated frequently to prevent the fares from being way irrelevant.

    Only when the customer proceeds beyond the search results, showing an intention to actually book, does the site query the GDS, and thats when the user discovers that the fare has changed or the flight is no longer available. But in the end, what the customer pays is what the GDS shows as the fare, which is what the airlines file.

  • Ted – Phoenix Justice

    Sites such as Expedia, Orbitz and the others have made no secret that part of their pricing strategy goes by “interest” in certain flights and properties. The more interest a person or persons shows in a certain flight or property, the more likely that their algorithms will trigger a higher price quote. Once “interest” has waned, the algorithms drop the price again.

    It is not some sinister conspiracy to gouge you, it is technology doing what it was created for.

  • Geoff

    The on-line reservations booking engines are using Sabre, Apolo, Amadaeus, and others. If you are booking United airlines on Amadeus, they may not have the last seat availability, but still quote the rate. When you go to book that rate the comuters talk and find that there is no availability and raise the class of service. A competent ASTA travel agent has last seat availability on all of these systems, so it’s a no brainer, use a travel agent and get off the internet. My livelyhood is based upon my ability to combine schedule and price. For a measly $30.00 I also advise all of the schedule changes, cancellations and re-routes.

  • DN

    Sorry, I’ve never experienced this and I fly over 50 times a year – using AmEx travel (aka Travelocity), Expedia, Orbitz, and airline websites. Perhaps you’re just being hit by the fact that airlines changes their fares based on capacity and some algorithm on a constant basis, and you’re not the only person booking that particular flight.

    If this were true, book a flight at the farthest possible timeframe available (such as 90 days, where the chances that someone else is booking that same flight is minimal) and then see if the fare changes with cookies activated. I can find the same flight roughly the same price on different websites – unless someone’s running a “web special” in which case the fare may be different.

  • Aimee

    I have experienced this with Travelocity or Expedia (once on each site). I had it with airfares and with a hotel in Jamaica. At first, I attributed it to the fact that I had waited an extra couple of days and now the best deals were gone. However, when I looked up the prices on my personal computer (instead of my work computer), I found the original rate first listed, which was $80 cheaper a night. BTW, I know it’s the original price because I had printed off a copy when I first found it. No memory problems with this one. After I cleared the cookies, I was quoted the original price and was able to book at that rate. Ditto on my flight.
    I don’t know if other sites do it, but I can assure you that it happened with these two. Now I know to clear the cookies before I shop around sites.

  • Barbara Bode

    Well DUH!

    I cerrtainly feel foolish/nonobservant/trusting…whatever.

    Other descriptions elude me at the moment because I’m focused on the last THREE times I was caught in this same routine. Generally, I’m in a hurry anyway and the increases have been fairly small. A month ago, however, the increase was about $150 (on what before taxes was a $300 trip) and a friend was making her own reservations to join me. We both took notes. After comparing, I returned to my original search, she did not. My ticket price increased, she decided not to buy a ticket.

    On each of the last three flights to which I refer, I was flying south from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico with a connection in Mexico City.

    All three times, I was using Trevelocity. This last time, I bought a ticket once again, despite the increase, because I was then leery of price increases all across the board.

    I just figured the increase was the luck of the draw. Oh well.

  • http://www.carrentalsavers.com Steve

    I worked for awhile in online marketing in the car rental industry. Several of the major car rental companies use cookies on their sites. Here is the privacy policy from Dollar:

    We also use “cookies” to collect and store information. A “cookie” is a file that contains data that a web site server stores on your computer’s hard drive. Your information is stored in the cookies, which allows us to recognize you when you return to our web site and move you through the reservation process quicker. You may avoid the use of cookies by electing to “turn off cookies” on your browser settings, however you will limit the efficiency cookies provides us.

    Does not say exactly what they are using them for. Best advice, turn them off or enable prompts when shopping for travel. In Internet Explorer go to tools/internet options/privacy/advanced to access settings.

  • http://www.kevinsbrady.com Kevin Brady

    I’m not sure about the cookie thing, but I can say a few of the fare sites show a lot of vaporware in the search results. Kayak comes to mind for this. On more than a few occasions I have spotted a fare that is significantly lower than others in the search results. After entering the personal info the site requires, it shows it as sold out. Coincidence, or bait-and-switch? Or just a cheap ploy to data mine some personal information? If a fare looks to good to be true, it probably is.

  • Debbie Stevens

    This happened to us while booking a flight on Frontier Airlines from Fort Lauderdale to Denver. My husband and I were travelling with another couple. While sitting at our computer, we booked our flight first and seconds later, while still at our computer, our friends booked their flight and the flight and the price increased by $13.00…not much, but noticeable.
    In the past we’ve searched for flights on one computer, returned to the site and found that the flight was full…We then went to the site from another computer and found available seats……coincidence??? Not so sure about that!

  • Ed F

    On an extremely limited basis, I was able to “prove” the theorem that multiple searches result in higher fares. I did 3 things: I was signed on at work on my work PC and got higher fares within a very limited time-frame. I then accessed the same websites (plural) from another PC in the office and was able to find the original pricing. I then deleted cookies, empltied temp files, etc. on my own PC. Searched again and, again, got the original pricing.

    I’m not given to paranoia, thank you. I am given to testing and trial and error.

    As before, a very limited test but my premise is: yes, cookies and temp file influence pricing. (Of course, I suspect lots of searches would also tell the travel/airline servers that there’s a lot of interest and they can price accordingly. However, to get the original pricing in the limited timeframe suggests it IS cookies. (Sorry to go on.)

  • Joe Farrell

    Here is my story – and you can reproduce it at will. It is a corrollary of the search cookie deal here.

    Go to a travel website – enter a search with the time you want to fly. You get a choice of times that are NOT when you want to fly – but which are cheaper or have more convenient times for the carrier.

    Then, go to another browser, looking at the times and flights with the cheaper tickets and put in THOSE times – the flights will generally come up – WITH A HIGHER FARE.

    So, what you need to do, if time is important to you, put in a time diametrically opposed to the time you want to travel – say, 6pm if you want to travel at 7am, the website programming will think you want to travel at 6p and give you the cheap 7am flights.

    The simple thing – open the cookies and LOOK at them. It is really clear that tracking is going on – you need to delete ALL cookies for a specific time frame around the time that you did your first search.

    Or, just come back the next day when the cookies will have expired in most cases.

    another example. I was on USAir’s website to book a ticket from New Haven CT to CHS [to get six total segments to qualify for preferred status until Feb 2010]. When I first looked in the AM fares were $99 each way – when I came back in the afternoon they were now $119. When I opened another browser moments later – they were back to $99. Same flights, same day. You cannot tell me that something is not going one there. . . .

  • http:/www.backpacktobuggy.com Meg

    This happens to me frequently because I shop the airline websites as well as the online agents. Now I go to itasoftware.com to get a good idea of what the lowest fares should be, clear my cookies and search sites where I can buy the fare. I also find that most of the time, the airline sites will be cheaper than orbitz/travelocity/expedia/etc…

  • Chris

    Can anyone use the ITA website? I see that you have to register but wasn’t sure if any “Joe Sixpack” could use it or if you had to be a travel agent…

  • don

    http://www.itasoftware.com does not require registration, you can search as a ‘guest’. I am registered as i use their service regularly. You can click on a fare and show all of the codes, and email that to your travel agent. It sometimes provides me with fares and routing that my travel agent was not shown on her system. I ALWAYS book through my travel agent internationally – they really earn their $ and it is absolutely necessary to have someone on your side when something unanticipated occurs overseas.

  • Eduardo Soares

    It happens to me all the time. I always book travel for a whole bunch of friends. But as I use Apple, I reset the safari and i can get the cheapest fare every time i do a search.

  • Sarah

    This absolutely happened to me on the US Airways website. I had a one-way fare on the BOS-DCA shuttle quoted at $71 and it was switched on me 5 minutes later. I ended up paying $109 one way, $38 more than I had hoped. I wish that I read this article earlier…
    Thanks for the info for the future.

  • Rick Damiani

    Far more likely is:

    - The flght in question is close to running out of seats at that fare
    - Your inqury causes the seat to be reserved, pending confirmation, so you can complete the transaction at that price if you choose to do so.
    - You check elsewhere and in the process remove the rest of the seats at that class
    - Going back to the original site, you get quoted a higher fare, becasue all the other seats at the lower fare class are ‘pending’

    The real culprit here is the bizarre fare rules most airlines use. With so many fare classifications, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a different fare paid for every occupied seat on a given flight.

  • http://wild-eh.blogspot.com/ Fida

    I agree fully with Rick Damiani. I worked as a travel agent and I know how quick the cheapest seats can be gone (an how bizarre the fare classification is). At least on our booking system we could see how many seats were left in which price category, and an agent can hold that spot for a certain amount of time. But if booked on the Internet one has to go all the way to see if the fare initially offered is really available – just checking prices is not enough.

  • Expat

    This absolutely happens with hotel websites! I used to be an admin and booked travel for multiple executives. It was my responsibility to get the lowest price possible, be it through our travel agency, or other websites. Often I would get a great rate from a hotel website – for my first individual (I needed to book individual reservations with different credit cards for expense purposes, rather than using booking multiple rooms in one name, with one card). When I would try to get the same rate for my next person, using my computer, the rate was no longer available. But if I went to one of my boss’ laptops, voila! there was the same low rate. I would have to use a different computer each time, to get them all the same low rate. To me it seemed obvious this was due to the use of cookies.

  • Sithe

    I know this is happening. At home I was checking on prices. When I checked later (anywhere from 5min to 24hrs later) the price ALWAYS went up. When I cleaned cookies out of my computer, the prices was ALWAYS cheaper. I tried it at work, also. I checked a prices and rechecked 5 min later. Then I knew my suspicions were accurate. I used a co-worker’s computer immediately and got my original lower price. I remember a sticker I once saw – “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you”.

  • Thomas Rush

    I’ve seen a slightly different issue. I search Expedia for flights (without hotels) to Prague. About an hour later I went to youtube.com and they started showing me expedia ads for hotels in Prague. In the old days cookies from one site were not readable by any other site – this was for security reasons. Somehow youtube.com told expedia that it was me who was watching and expedia delivered an ad targeted to me – how otherwise did a hotel ad for Prague come up on youtube when I had searched only on expedia? Somehow they’ve clearly circumvented the privacy of cookies per site.

  • http://expedia traveller 111

    well, the thing that I noticed is when i check for flight fares, i usually check tha rate just for 1 person .. then whe i get to the booking, and actually check up fare for 2 people, the rate works out higher per person !!! why is that ?!?! every flight is charged with extra tax, and surcharge .. and blablaa ++++ so why bump up the flight rate wether you are travelling alone or not ?!!

  • Michael Morris

    From my experience I am almost positive that this is happening. Shouldn’t this sort of thing be illegal? This is companies pressuring people to think that if demand is artificially inflated, when it’s not. Just yesterday I searched for a flight that is months from now. There were many reasonably priced tickets available from several carriers. Today I search and both departure and return flights are all $100 higher for the days that I tried to book before. It’s also ridiculous that the airline sites don’t use ssl security (https://) so that browsers can feel secure in their purchase and that there connection isn’t being intercepted in some way. I am very disappointed in the industry as a whole because I used to think that it was only the deal sites that did this, but it is clearly also the carriers themselves. This experience in particular was southwest. They practically admitted to it when I was speaking with customer service on the phone saying, “We’ve actually had that complaint before. Unfortunately, we can’t do anything about it, but we will note down your claim and if we hear it enough we will make a change.”

    Pretty sad. Seems there is need for regulation against this sort of thing. It’s out of control.