When I book airline tickets, I always wonder if the price will drop after I buy them. Should I wait a few days in hopes of saving money or should I just bite the bullet and move on?
A new web site called FareCast.com aims to help travelers who hate to pay too much. The web site will predict whether the price of a particular ticket should go up, down or remain the same. A professor at the University of Washington decided to create the site after sitting next to a fellow airline traveler, who had spent $100 less for his ticket. Amazing what provokes some people.
An outside audit of tens of thousands of Farecast.com’s predictions concluded that they were correct 75% of the time.
Another web site to check out is Yapta.com, which stands for “Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant.” Yapta will alert you if there’s been a price change for a flight that you are interested in booking.
Meanwhile, if you rely upon the big web-based travel agencies — Travelocity.com, Expedia.com and Orbitz.com, you might want to branch out. My complaint against this trio is they typically ignore the discount carriers, such as Jet Blue and Southwest Airlines. Happily, these upstart search engines — Kayak.com and SideStep.com — cast a wider net.