
Show HN: Where would you go if flights weren't expensive? Email alerts to save $ - timtrippy
http://www.tripfate.com
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timtrippy
Hello world,

I am working on putting together the beta for
[http://TripFate.com](http://TripFate.com) and thought it might be a good idea
to share the story and motivation behind it.

I met my wife exactly 4 years ago - all thanks to being on the right flight at
the right time. Funny thing is, I wasn't really supposed to be on that flight
to Rome. As much as I loved traveling, I was a poor college student and I
couldn't really afford the expensive flights.

And then it happened. I was looking for flights to random destinations after
wrapping up my project report at 4 AM, and I found a round-trip ticket to Rome
(from NYC) for ~$110! It was crazy because the usual prices are at least in
the $350-400 range.

I got super hooked! After I returned from my trip, I registered on a bunch of
websites to get alerts if there was a price drop. I did get some good deals,
but nothing was as crazy cheap as the one I had found for my trip to Rome.

Long story short, I created a service for myself over the years that'd look
for flights from across the internet that really were 'great' for their price.
In the beginning, it simply sent API requests and had a bunch of if-else
statements. However, over the years, I've added a bunch of Machine Learning
and Deep Learning tricks to the algorithm.

Moreover, I have instances of my 'smart travel finder' running on around 14
different servers around the world (who knew looking for a flight from India
is cheaper sometimes!).

I started getting lots of really interesting flights: ~$170 round-trip to
Cancun, ~$230 to Paris, ~$340 to India... and so I decided to share it with
family and friends and friends of friends. Once the list grew to over 200, I
thought maybe people would be interested in paying for the service, and that's
how [http://TripFate.com](http://TripFate.com) was born.

