

The Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm - SingAlong
http://mobocube.com/post/16512228268/cleartrip-hurry-algorithm

======
hrush
Hi,

My name is Hrush. I am one of Cleartrip's founders and I'd like to clarify how
things actually work.

Firstly, the "X seats left" feature is not an 'algorithm' at all. It is a
simple count of the number of 'seats remaining' at a specific price point for
a specific flight departure.

In the example illustrated in the post, there is only a single seat left at a
price point of Rs. 34,255. This does not mean that there is only one seat left
on the flight, it means there is only one seat left at that specific price.

When the search was repeated for 2 travellers, the price per person increased
to 35,746, and then increased to Rs. 37,008 per person when the search was
done for 4 travellers.

Airline pricing is based on 'fare classes' or 'buckets'. Buckets typically
work like this:

1\. Each bucket is allocated a fixed number of seats.

2\. Each bucket is associated with exactly one price point

3\. When there are no more seats available in a bucket, seats from the next
highest bucket are displayed and so on

At Cleartrip, we work hard to give our customers the best prices. We never
have and never will engage in the "fake scarcity tactics" that this post
accuses us of.

I'd also like to point out again that we have a tool tip on the button that
clearly reads that there are 'X seats left at this price'.

~~~
tpatke
Sounds like a minor usability problem has cost you a potential customer. The
question is how many other customers have had the same problem but not
bothered to write blog posts.

Relying on tooltips is probably a bad idea. Maybe change the button text to 'X
seats at this price'. Don't make me think. :-)

On the bright side, be thankful for the good user feedback. I wish everyone
who stopped using my product wrote a blog post.

~~~
Uchikoma
This made them a ton of customers who read the label as everyone else, felt
pressured and bought the ticket [ _].

[_] Not that I endorse that practice.

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jann
I just tested it myself and can't confirm it. I started by searching for a
flight for one person and got a few offers which said "3/4 seats left" and if
you hover over the image you'll get the alt text "x seats left for that
price".

It actually looks like a neat feature which shows you how many seats are left
in the cheapest fare group that applies to your settings.

EDIT: I just did some more testing, searching for different person counts, and
it does exactly what I thought.

When you get "3 seats left" then you can book for 3 persons for the cheapest
price, and whenever you add a 4th person, the price is higher than four times
the 1-person price

------
epo
Pretty inane article and mildly paranoid conclusion. If it had said "x seats
available" it would have been grammatically correct but too long for a button.
And yes, "algorithm" was geek linkbait.

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zaph0d
It basically shows the number of seats left in the same fare-basis. The
problem is with the communication, and not the supposed "algorithm".

------
Maxious
There's this super-budget airline in Australia, Tiger Airways, so budget that
they skimped on training pilots and got shutdown for some time.

Anyway, their website at some point had two hidden features: if you tried to
book in a group it would charge you more per person (because you're depriving
them of "credit card surcharge") AND just checking the price of a certain
flight a certain amount of times (showing interest in that flight) would raise
the price by some increment for every other customer on the website
automatically.

~~~
plaes
There's at least one site I know that raises prices when you are re-visiting
the specific flight (via cookie tracking).

~~~
mrgoldenbrown
Is there a reason you can't tell us which one?

------
dspillett
This is why I've completely and utterly screened out "limited special offer"
anything these days. I will not be conned into not shopping around (which is
why they do this, obviously), and I don't buy things unless I need them at the
time. Occasaionaly I'll lose out when there genuinely was limited stock
available and it was a good price, but overall I'm probabbly better of and
certainly less rushed.

All retail (web or bricks-and-mortar) and services advertising is lies pretty
much at this point. A colleque gets an SMS from the local Bannatynes gym that
he used to be a member of telling him about a limited time "rejoin" offer that
has limited places. He has had the same message at least once a month for the
last twelve months so basically both the calim of limited places and the claim
that it is a limited time offer are basically lies. Or the DFDS sale "you'll
never see these prices again!!!!!". The list is endless.

By being dishonest in these ways, some in the retail and services industries
are pushing people like me (people with enough money to not mind that they
might sometimes pay a little extra in order to avoid being lied to) away.

Having said that, the example given here _isn't_ actually lying (they don't
say "only X seats available") though it is misleadingly presented, either
accidentally or the site is being deliberately disengneuous, and if that is
deliberate than it is little better than a lie.

------
micheljansen
This is arguably an application of so-called "Dark Patterns"; the black hat of
UX design. The red colour, the suggestive copy are all chosen to invoke a
sense of urgency. A List Apart has a good article on the subject:
[http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dark-patterns-
deception-v...](http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dark-patterns-deception-
vs.-honesty-in-ui-design/)

~~~
digikata
I think the theme of false urgency/scarcity is the main annoyance of the
Cleartrip presentation. The rest of it is just a matter of Cleartrip
displaying few seats for a narrow price, vs MakeMyTrip displaying more seats
with a wider pricing range.

------
bjoernbu
Since the price is not proportional to the number of passengers, I assume
there are only x seats at the displayed price. Still misleading but not es
"evil" as otherwise.

PS: I kinda take the word "algorithm" in teh lheadline as link bait. Without
it, I would have never klicked the link.

------
SingAlong
A lot of people are calling this title linkbait for using the word
"algorithm". But I think the author is being a bit _sarcastic_ here and hence
the title of the post.

P.S: I'm not the author, I only found the article interesting when I found it
on twitter.

------
hrush
We've posted a more detailed explanation with screenshots and examples here:

<http://bit.ly/yP3muv>

~~~
dotmanish
Your screenshot shows the tooltip visible, which aren't by default (as already
noted by a couple of commenters already).

Someone on twitter mentioned that they had bought some flight tickets only
because of this 'confusion' :
<https://twitter.com/#!/jayeshb/status/162512878287589377>

Is that a one-off case because of confusion?

~~~
hrush
We only launched this feature last week, so it's hard to say whether it's a
"one-off" case.

------
Uchikoma
They won't change the interface, as it works for them.

When deciding between being shady and getting more money, and being honest and
getting less money, they already chose their side.

------
hrush
We've redesigned the feature now and it is now live in production.

Details of the design changes: <http://bit.ly/y3uvv0>

------
piyushpr
PAWNed

------
moj34
Well spotted... although it seems a little generous to call this an algorithm
:-)

~~~
pitchups
I am pretty sure I have seen the exact same "trick" being used on sites here
in the US - including Kayak, and Orbitz etc. So I don't think Cleartip in the
only travel site that does this. And probablly that is how Cleartrip got the
idea from. Also, not to defend this practice in any way, but did not the OP
realize that the price of the seats was changing each time he increased the
number of passengers.

