I'm torn on whether this has any potential for success but I strongly believe you chose the wrong launch cities. These are all crowded, "destination" cities with tons of people to meet and places to go, with a large urban core. I imagine people in growing cities without much of a central core and far less "personality" would desire something like this a lot more. Think Phoenix, Charlotte, Minneapolis, etc.
All airline pricing is unadvertised and not communicated. They also sell through lots of independent agencies and channels.
It would be weird to specifically advertise this. Unlike say, buying a second pair of shoes - not many people will buy an extra plane ticket to save 30% off both.
The thing I find interesting about a lot of things like this is that they feel like a holdover of half the era where negotiating prices was normal: today, for most people in the US, most shopping is just a matter of going somewhere and paying a set price and you don’t argue with the seller to get a better one. B2B transactions still usually involve a negotiation, I think, but it’s basically gone for consumers.
With something like airfares, the business is still doing its half of negotiations: collecting bits of data about the buyer to determine a price; but, crucially, there’s no real way for the buyer to “talk back” and so the process seems arbitrary.
>The thing I find interesting about a lot of things like this is that they feel like a holdover of half the era where negotiating prices was normal: today, for most people in the US, most shopping is just a matter of going somewhere and paying a set price and you don’t argue with the seller to get a better one. B2B transactions still usually involve a negotiation, I think, but it’s basically gone for consumers.
Not really. The "negotiation" is still there. Time limited discounts weed out consumers who need something immediately. Coupons weed out people who aren't willing to put the legwork to find them. Loyalty programs and app-based offers (eg. McDonalds) take all of this to the next level by sending targeted coupons based on whatever demographic/behavioral information they can glean from you.
Yeah, but it's not routine. I don't go into Walmart and quibble unlike some Middle Eastern bazaar. I probably do some negotiation at the car dealer (which, incidentally, many people on this board probably hate or with a job offer--ditto). And coupon stuff is mostly pretty low dollar; the grocery store flyers I get go in the trash.
Retailers often have weekly sales. If that's not "routine" what is? Is it only "negotiation" if it's happening on a per customer basis? Moreover apps with targeted offers is literally doing that. The company is assessing a given customer's willingness to pay, possibly on a daily basis, and sending offers/coupons in response.
It's price discrimination in that different people have different tolerances for spending time and energy on hunting for deals. I'm sure not lining up at 6am for Black Friday sales though I may take advantage of a President's Day sale if I need some large electronics anyway. It's not really negotiation as the term is normally used. The process is pretty different.
>It's price discrimination in that different people have different tolerances for spending time and energy on hunting for deals.
I never argued it's not price discrimination. In fact I was arguing the opposite, that price discrimination is the same as "negotiation", and it's alive and well in modern times. It might not be "negotiation" in the sense there's two parties going back and forth, but the end goal of negotiation is price discrimination. If coupons and apps do the same thing, does the fact that you're not talking to a salesman really matter?
In the early days you didn't have the internet where people would share every tiny anomaly, allowing thousands of people to exploit them. Even then, you had a few people realize they could do mileage runs, but it was considered additional revenue and the perks of doing so weren't valued nearly as highly as they are today.
There are lots of things airlines could offer, that they don't. They are all obsessed with "loyalty", why not sell travelers multi-packs (6 flights over the next 12 months) or subscription-like plans? Why a 24-hour cancellation period even for flights booked months ahead... they could certainly extend that to allow for "low-risk" booking or even charging a small fee for the right to cancel up to, say, 3 months in advance. Auctioning off unsold seats. Selling itineraries with multi-day layovers in a 3rd city (basically adding a second destination to a vacation). Lots more with a bit of creativity.
Airlines do sell multi-packs with flexible rebooking. At least United and Delta did pre-covid, I haven’t had a use since then though.
With even moderate airline status rebooking/cancellations work more or less as described. I can’t recall the last time I haven’t been credited for a flight I ended up not taking, even I did a full on no-show.
Without status airlines sell refundable tickets with similar flexible rules, but I assume there is some adverse selection included in how they need to price those fares.
Yes most airlines have eliminated change fees, and rebooking isn't too difficult for business travelers. But that's not a refund, and people booking 6 to 12 months out tend to be families going on vacation or to a specific event. So if something changes, there isn't always something else to book, or at least not on that specific airline. Further, what you call "moderate" status - the lowest level - has been raised to require an enormous amount of spending on any one of the major airlines. And don't get me started with "you only need to spend 100k on their credit card..."
Realistically most frequent travelers go for business and they don’t care about cost that much so subscription packs wouldn’t be valuable. That’s why loyalty programs instead offer non monetary perks or those that accrue to the individual (points).
I dont really buy into the businesses don't care about cost - maybe for top execs - but companies are obsessed with expense reports and accounting for every penny, reducing per diems, limiting hotel cost ceilings, booking through a specific travel agency, etc. And of course most companies are working overtime in every other department to slash costs, why would travel be spared? Being able to buy flights in bulk and save money seems like it would be highly appealing to finance managers.
Of course, there are exceptions. Governments seem to be some of the worst violators, they really do not care about costs and in many cases they egregiously throw money around for 5 star luxury hotels, first class flights, etc.
Yes, most domestic US airlines have eliminated change fees. But as you point out, it's not possible to get your money back and it's not easy to make changes if you don't have an alternative trip in mind. Cancellability is valuable (see hotel bookings), and yet, people over-value the option - sometimes out of laziness, or they forgot, or they go with the original plan. I have difficulty believing airlines would lose very much if they offered full refundability up to about 3 or 4 months in advance, but they would probably get more bookings, most of which would likely not get cancelled.
A lot depends on your travel habits. Credit on my usual airline (United) is pretty much a no-brainer within the year--I'll use it barring circumstances where losing some airline dollars are the least of my problems. Less so than it used to be but still.
For hotels, I still tend to pay the premium. I don't expect to cancel but, especially for an extended city stay, it can be a fair amount of money and the premium usually isn't that huge.
Agreed. I participated in a points-based package that used to be offered by AirAsia. It was about $300 for 30 points. Flights between cities/countries were 1 to 3 points each, I probably got 3x my money's worth and still had about 4 or 5 points left over.
The equivalent would be a simple text list of all Waffle Houses currently closed, sourced by physically visiting each location and noting any closures. The author here used Waffle House's branding and logos, and also sourced the data by scraping their web site.
Meetup essentially had a monopoly, you could go to a new city or foreign country and immediately connect with likeminded people. I guess it wasn't profitable enough to pay off their VC so they kept changing it and adding dumb "features" and raising the price... and now it's basically useless.
> measure the worth of investment and expenditures of capital by their holistic benefit to society.
This seems specious, I mean, when? And how?
The article seems to contradict you, given that it is mostly focused on tech companies that do in fact spend billions in product development and tend to delay huge profits. Amazon, famously, was universally praised for its various innovations in e-commerce (i.e. benefit to society) while not making a profit for what, 25 years? The current business press gushes over "big data", the metaverse, AI, whatever, despite many such projects actually losing billions of dollars before being shut down or vastly reduced.
I'm not claiming these companies do actually benefit society, but Wall Street and the press is often willing to overlook immediate profit for the promise of long-term dominance (and the rewards that come with that) and in the meantime, they will at least promote the possibility of future societal benefit to justify their position.
This guy is so cool, he uses the word "ratfucked"! Twice! Not just "fucked", but "ratfucked". Of course, congestion pricing was in fact implemented and remains in effect, so maybe not entirely "ratfucked"? Guess I'm not cool enough to understand. And because of his choice of words, people who are unfamiliar with this project don't even know what action(s) Kathy Hochul actually took that was/were detrimental.
My guess is that she lacks the essential political skill of reading the room. It's not like NYC is the first city to attempt congestion pricing. Anyone who has spent any time in London can see its benefits. So I think Hochul had her political focus on the wrong things.
It took a lot of time and effort to bring the stakeholders together for congestion pricing. And to withhold her approval at the last moment was shocking. It's hard to imagine what she was really thinking and even harder to understand how she felt she would be rewarded for it. That's not a real answer to your question, but her reasoning on both congestion pricing and Eric Adams just seems opaque.
Perhaps it's a social sign for being one of the NYC local. They also referred to a person by a single name, further emphasizing they were speaking to the select few who would know what they were talking about.
If only they could also write with a heavy NYC accent, their comment would be even cooler. Forget about it.
That's interesting. It must be that I associate rats with NYC. You used some terms that not everyone is familair with, I jump to the wrong conclusion, taking some guesses as to what you're talking about, and here we are.
ratfucking as a term in political context was dramatically popularized by the movie All the President’s Men, where a (historical) character describes his covert political actions thusly.
