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Are Cookies on your Computer Increasing the Cost of Your Vaction?
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Here's something interesting I learned from this month's (June) edition of Budget Travel.
You know all those cookies that websites drop on your computer to recognize you every time you come back (Hi Neil!)? Well, they can be used against you on travel sites.
Let's say you visit a site to get a quote on a vacation package. Well, now thanks to the cookie, they know every trip you've taken with them in the past. Did you pay a sucker rate last time you went to Acapulco? Don't think the computer will not take that into consideration the next time the travel site quotes you a rate. Nor will you ever be offered any "new customer" discounts to win you over as a new customer.
Want to remove the cookie and try your luck as a virtual unknown regular customer? Simply check out the tools or preferences menu on most browsers.
Filed under: Gear
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bob May 26th 2007 6:33PM
I can tell you from working at an OLTA (online travel agent), that none of us are this smart. Most companies will post-process information about your past trips, but it takes some serious systems to do this real-time and actually adjust a quote based on cookie data.
While its a good idea to flush cookies on a regular basis, this reason is not anything to be worried about.
James Donch Jun 10th 2007 2:07AM
There has to be something to this. I was looking for a flight from china and found a quote of 890 US, the next day, wanting to take advantage of the price I found nothing less than 1,400. My friend took his computer out and searched the same site and found a price of $950. I booked that flight. Perhaps it is a coincidence but .. since then I have been finding that the first time I search a site I seem to get a lower fare than when I come back a few days later. I agree with or mr. Woodburn
Brooks May 27th 2007 3:16AM
I'm highly skeptical of this. #2's anecdotal evidence is kind of backwards: if you visit a site and won't buy for $500, how could they possibly think you'd pay $550 a day or two later? If there was evil cookie stuff going on, it would work exactly the opposite: they'd quote you a high price, and if you didn't bite, they'd lower it the next visit. *Raising* the price on subsequent visits would just make them look worse when you comparison shop.
Cookies are only shared with the site that set them. So if I go to Travelocity and pay a "sucker" price, and then go back for a second trip and they quote me sucker prices, and I check, say, Expedia or Sidestep (who won't get my "this guy is an idiot" cookie) and get a lower price, Travelocity has lost a customer for life.
Most legitimate businesses would rather have a repeat customer at decent margins than gouge someone once or twice and never see them again.
And on the technical side, it would only work when booking on the same site, from the same browser, on the same computer. It just seems like a non-technical person's fantasy about how things could be, rather than a well-documented expose of what *is*.
Amanda May 28th 2007 10:54AM
There is definitely some truth to this with going through the big discount sites like Orbitz and Expedia. Two years ago when booking a package deal to Jamacia deleting the cookies got us back to the original price we found (about 1,000 vs 1,300 quoted later) after spending time going back and fourth through different options. I think they do it to make you think that you have miss the fantastic deal you found the first time around, as repeatively viewing a package page would mean you have an interest in purchasing it. Try it yourself if you don't believe.
Bob May 29th 2007 12:13PM
#2 and #4's perceptions are nothing more than price changes dictated by the airlines which trickle down to the OTLAs. These changes can and do take place ever second in some cases. There is no deception on this level.