The lifecycle of aggregators may have some parallels with the fall of high-frequency trading. Eventually, the technology barrier to entry falls, incumbents fight back and the ecosystem rebalances.
Two topics missing from this article are AirBnB and low-cost airlines that fly to smaller airports. AirBnB does not compete with aggregators and cannot be shut out on the supply side by hotels. Do low-cost airlines (like Norwegian) benefit from customer discovery via aggregators?
Do aggregators change prices based on geographic location of the buyer? The article mentioned an experiment with higher prices for OSX buyers.
"Do aggregators change prices based on geographic location of the buyer"
Anecdotally, I booked a flight a few weeks ago through expedia.hk for an itinerary that was not even available through expedia.com. I'm not sure if they geotarget, but for Expedia at least, the TLD you go through matters.
I've also found a South American carrier (I forget which) to have significantly different prices depending on whether the website is in Spanish or English (alas, they wouldn't accept my US card through the Spanish site).
> South American carrier (I forget which) to have significantly different prices depending on whether the website is in Spanish or English
That's certainty true of Brazil's main airline TAM (now called LATAM). You often pay about 50% more as a foreigner. Note that Brazil speaks Portuguese, not Spanish, so your experience may have been with another South American airline doing the same thing.
Even if you use LATAM's Brazilian portal where you have to navigate in Portuguese, you won't get the cheaper Brazilian price. That's because they have this great little trick to determine if you're a foreigner. They demand that you enter your CPF number, a Brazilian national identity number, to buy the cheaper ticket from the Brazilian portal. And you can't make one up, or use the CPF number of a Brazilian friend, because they query a government database to verify that the CPF number matches the purchaser's name.
Collecting the CPF number is not dictated by the government. You can buy a ticket in person at a travel agency in Brazil or at the airport without a CPF number. As far as I can tell, this CPF business is LATAM's way to get a higher price out of foreign visitors for online purchases.
LAN is 100% cheaper on the Spanish website. I had no difficulty booking using an AU credit card. Also sells return tickets with a total cost less than the cost one way ticket to the same destination. Weird business model but my wallet was happy that I figured it out. :D
"Do aggregators change prices based on geographic location of the buyer?"
Not sure if they do, but airlines do. I wanted to fly from NYC to Singapore for a few days, and then fly to a friends wedding in the Philippines. Searching the websites, the fares were ~600$ but my singaporean friends said it should be cheaper. So I flew to singapore, walked into a local travel agent office and got my tickets for around 150 SGD
Its hard to tell because they change pricing based on so many other factors relating to browser usage history. Try an aggregator with the same query in both a normal tab and a private tab after doing a bunch of googling for the destination.
> Do aggregators change prices based on geographic location of the buyer? The article mentioned an experiment with higher prices for OSX buyers.
They offer different products at the very least. CarTrawler is a car rental aggregator and they've found all sorts of geographic aberrations through AB testing (who's willing to pay for insurance, who prefers to see cheapest cars first etc). I'd be very surprised if they're not using hardware/software info to inform their offerings.
Two topics missing from this article are AirBnB and low-cost airlines that fly to smaller airports. AirBnB does not compete with aggregators and cannot be shut out on the supply side by hotels. Do low-cost airlines (like Norwegian) benefit from customer discovery via aggregators?
Do aggregators change prices based on geographic location of the buyer? The article mentioned an experiment with higher prices for OSX buyers.