> For reasons I never quite understood, every time I tried to book a domestic flight in another country, the prices were always exorbitant.
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> But, say, once I was in Bangkok, that same flight that was once $300 would fall to $30 almost inexplicably. This phenomenon is because a ticket’s point-of-sale—the place where a retail transaction is completed—can affect the price of any flight with an international component.
The reasons are pretty easy to understand. When you try to book an in-country flight in Thailand from the United States or Europe, they infer that you are someone who will soon be traveling on an expensive international flight to Thailand. They infer that you will accept $300 for an in-country flight rather than say "screw this, I'll take the train or bus", because (1) you can afford international travel so $300 probably isn't a big deal to you, and (2) there's a good chance you are on a business trip and need that domestic flight to keep things on schedule.
When you try to book an in-country flight from within Thailand, those inferences do not work.
At some point, they'll get clever and look at your IP address when you make an online booking, and even if you are booking in-country they will give you the $300 rate if you are connected through a hotel that is popular with international travelers.
This does not only go for airline tickets, it's very common in all transactions. Just need to go to the console market and compare the game prices between market. They extract whatever they think the customer is able to pay.
There are people buying diapers and filling trucks with them going from one country to another because of the large price difference between the countries.
People do this in America with tobacco cigarettes. In Missouri, the taxes are low so the price per pack spread can be pretty high when compared to NY state, so people illegally sell Missouri cigs to NY stores to avoid the high taxes.
I do the same thing, but with booze. The Idaho border is 15 minutes away, and the amount you save (at least, if you drink as much as I do) is well worth the time spent getting there and back.
Or if you're in my area and need cigarettes, you drive to the nearest reservation and buy them tax free (which like you point out, makes a huge difference). This one is a little bit more of a legal gray area, but that never stopped anyone.
This is also very common of people in Massachusetts who live near the NH border. The state run NH liquor stores are significantly cheaper than in MA. They also conveniently place their stores all along the border on major highways. It's less that an hour drive from Boston.
My friend and I were hitchhiking through Ireland awhile back. We got a ride up into Northern Ireland with an older guy. A little ways before crossing the border he stopped to buy a trunkload tobacco so he could resell it up north.
> There are people buying diapers and filling trucks with them going from one country to another because of the large price difference between the countries.
Cheers for looking up the stats. But I suppose there might be more to it than just "average price of booze". For instance, when I (in NL) need some quantity of (cheap) vodka for a party, it pays to get them from Germany where most hard liquor[0] is roughly half the price than it is in NL. Other stuff, like beer, is about the same.
[0] that isn't marked up for other reasons, such as Whiskey
Every once in a while, certain people in southern Sweden will go on a booze shopping spree in Germany. They'll drive south, take a ferry to one of the German coastal cities and fill their cars to the limits of what is legal (and oftentimes over that) from these so called border shops.
This is also common in the United States. A couple examples I'm familiar with:
- Pennsylvania has relatively strict laws regarding alcohol, so just over the Delaware border you'll find a lot of these "border shops" (although I haven't heard that word in the US);
- my wife was born in a dry county in Arkansas. Just over the county line (which happens to be the state border with Oklahoma) there are drive-through liquor stores. You can go, get your booze, and turn right around and go home.
This is still a thing, at least if the number of fireworks stores right at state lines are any indication. (I recently saw some along the Georgia-Tennessee border, although I can't remember which side they were on.)
It is even stranger in Texas, where the state says they are OK to sell at certain times of year but most large cities and towns prohibit them. Thus, you see seasonal roadside stands set up in unincorporated areas.
I have a friend in Denmark who told me he buys a danish beer from Germany and has it shipped to him in Denmark, because its cheaper. I thought that was pretty interesting in itself.
Finland has even more idiotic rules: microbreweries aren't allowed to sell their wares online. So they ship them across the Gulf of Finland to Estonia, which is way more liberal, and sell them online from there, which Finland can't prohibit thanks to EU free trade laws... and then the orders get shipped right back to Finnish buyers!
Remember though that this is tax fraud if you exceed certain quantities, while airline price discrimination is legal, so it's not quite the same thing :)
Are you sure of that? Certainly you can bring with yourself (for personal use) as much alcohol as you want across any EU border, and I'd be surprised if it became a fraud at some point just because it's shipped for you.
This kind of airline price discrimination, however, is not legal within the EU.
They're doing that in Venezuela with food. The prices of staples are subsidized, so the citizens are buying locally, and reselling in neighboring Colombia.
When I traveled to and within Chile in the late 90's, I was advised to not book domestic Chile flights from the U.S., but instead to just buy them with cash at the LAN Chile office once I got there. Good advice: they were way cheaper that way.
The reason given was that there is no way to drive the length of Chile within its borders. If you want to go from southern to northen Chile, you have to either drive through Argentina, or fly. So the Chilean government subsidizes domestic airfares, basically as a matter of sovereignty. Buying in cash in a local office, you get the subsidized price.
I never checked to see if the subsidy story was actually true, but the price was definitely lower in-country.
I would assume it only covers EU citizens buying tickets in an EU country from an EU country. A common scenario, but it doesn't help the rest of the world.
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> But, say, once I was in Bangkok, that same flight that was once $300 would fall to $30 almost inexplicably. This phenomenon is because a ticket’s point-of-sale—the place where a retail transaction is completed—can affect the price of any flight with an international component.
The reasons are pretty easy to understand. When you try to book an in-country flight in Thailand from the United States or Europe, they infer that you are someone who will soon be traveling on an expensive international flight to Thailand. They infer that you will accept $300 for an in-country flight rather than say "screw this, I'll take the train or bus", because (1) you can afford international travel so $300 probably isn't a big deal to you, and (2) there's a good chance you are on a business trip and need that domestic flight to keep things on schedule.
When you try to book an in-country flight from within Thailand, those inferences do not work.
At some point, they'll get clever and look at your IP address when you make an online booking, and even if you are booking in-country they will give you the $300 rate if you are connected through a hotel that is popular with international travelers.