My first thought was: what's to stop someone from waiting for some responses and then running over to Kayak to book once they know the best dates/airlines.
But it looks like they take the finder's fee upfront. It would be nice if there were an option to only pay the finder's fee if someone significantly beats the best price you were able to find.
Everyone does at least an _initial_ search to get an idea of price when they're considering a trip, right? And presumably the experts have an idea of the typical price on given routes and can decide whether the "price to beat" is attainable?
We tried your suggested method, but there were too many complications in practice. Many people quoted fake prices and, of course, prices and availability change regularly.
Most of all, we'd rather not create a competitive relationship with the customer. The idea of the concept is to relieve you of all the time and stress related to flight search (especially on more complex itineraries). So asking you to first search yourself and post a price is somewhat contrary to our vision.
We may revert to this method in future, because we're constantly testing, but at this stage we think we have a reasonable balance between customer and expert.
I agree....I think there is more than enough incompetence and inefficiency in this industry that you will have plenty of customers who won't think twice about the fee, as long as you can ensure that they are getting a competent person planning their flight, and the result will be the best that can be done.
I think so too. I have a flight coming up and was actually willing to try the service and pay the fee if the price found would be less than I usually pay for the trip. I went as far as entering the details and providing my email address. But as soon as I saw the request to pay, I closed the page. I have reasons to believe that the option I already have (and have used in the past) would be hard to beat. So I'm not willing to pay upfront.
Just my 2 cents.
UPDATE: I think an ideal solution would be if you at least could quote a price before I had to choose whether to pay or not.
I'm also willing to pay, but only once I know what I'm paying for. I can find the flight I want for (say) $500. If this service can get it to me for $400, great! But I'm only going to enter my credit card details _after_ that's been established. Otherwise, what if your "experts" can only find something for $480? Or $525?
This seems totally self-evident to me. Maybe I missed something.
Keep in mind that real people are searching on the other end, so there needs to be a balance between expended effort and income. We tried what you're suggesting, but it just didn't work.
As per your example, let's say I find a flight for $400. Would you pay without seeing details? If not, would you paying seeing the details, but without booking instructions? If not, would you pay after booking even if it meant the hassel of returning to our site, pulling out your CC details and then paying?
Our experience is that only a fraction of people will pay in this scenario.
This aside, we are targeting people who we can help the most. That is, people flying to remote places, or on complex itineraries, or who just want to absolve themselves of the stress. In our testing, these people have no problem paying up front. And if they're not happy, we do everything we can to help.
The real challenge of this business is managing the interactions between the two sides of our marketplace. Most of our early assumptions were proven false. :)
let's say I find a flight for $400.
Would you pay without seeing details?
Sure. I mean, I would have to trust your system, but you're not emitting any scammy signals, so I basically do.
we are targeting people who we can help
the most. That is, people flying to remote
places, or on complex itineraries, or who
just want to absolve themselves of the stress.
While I like the idea, I can see this as a problem too.
Those who want a peace of mind booking are probably running their flights on corporate accounts, are miles collecting or have established flight booking relationships. And price sensitive customers are most likely going to try finding the best deal themselves. Maybe the best way to solve that would be to give for 24h a best-price guarantee. Just for the "peace of mind" for the consumer - I am sure only a very low percentage is ever going to make use of it.
* Flying for the first time to Australia. Expedia gives you a price from Sydney to Perth for $500. Unbeknownst to you, there's a discount airline called "XXXXX" who does this leg for $150. Sure you could find it if you searched enough, but why not just pay $29 to crowd-source it? Most travel agents will not volunteer budget airlines, neither will many OTAs.
* You're flying from Buenos Aires to Toronto. It's Xmas and Kayak is quoting $1400. You can't find better anywhere and seats are disappearing fast. You put up a contest for $29 and an expert suggests booking to Ottawa and hopping off in Toronto to save over $400 each. They also suggest going to Montreal instead, paying $40 for a bus, and saving $900 each. Again, you could work this out yourself eventually, but why not just pay $29?
Consider these edge-case examples:
* You are relocating to another country but need to take your 3 cats. It will take you 5+ hours to find out exactly how to transport your cats. There are lots of regulations, especially when flying during winter. Why not just pay $29 and get someone who's flown with pets to save you many hours. (This is a real example from Flightfox.)
* You are flying with a group of 20 people from the US to Australia. You pay $29 and an expert gets in contact with an agent who has specific consolidated stock with an airline. You save $600 per person compared to the absolute cheapest price online. (This is a real example from Flightfox.)
Then of course there's premium class and using FF points. We've saved $5,000+ on exactly the same flights for business class travellers. Also, people don't realise the power of FF points. You can get RTW for 140k. But most people use 120k for simple return flights. If they do 2x return coach flights with FF points, they could almost have booked a RTW in _business class_ and flown many more segments than the 2 flights put together.
But it looks like they take the finder's fee upfront. It would be nice if there were an option to only pay the finder's fee if someone significantly beats the best price you were able to find.
Everyone does at least an _initial_ search to get an idea of price when they're considering a trip, right? And presumably the experts have an idea of the typical price on given routes and can decide whether the "price to beat" is attainable?