Timeline for How does Expedia manage to sell a room significantly cheaper than the hotel itself?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 3, 2019 at 21:18 | comment | added | JimmyJames | @cbmeeks I'm not sure scam is the right term. The economics term for this is price discrimination. If you charge everyone a high price, you lose customers, if you charge everyone a low price, then you lose the money you would have gotten from the customers willing to pay more. The goal is to get all the customers possible to pay the highest price they are willing to fork over. It's extremely common across many categories of goods and services. | |
| Jan 3, 2019 at 19:02 | comment | added | cbmeeks | @jf328 mattress companies do the exact same thing. They sell the same mattress in two "competing" stores. One much cheaper than the other. It's a win-win for them. If someone buys the "discounted one", they make a profit. If someone buys the more expensive one, they make more of a profit. It's a total scam. | |
| Jan 3, 2019 at 15:18 | comment | added | Brian R | Hotels often have a posted room rate - check the sign near the door and you'll see a room's value at some absurd multiple of what you paid. That value is used as their valuation of the room's cost in the event that they need to seek damages. Using that value, they can easily say that a room is selling for 20% of the true value, but nobody is ever actually paying 'face value'. | |
| Jan 3, 2019 at 11:31 | vote | accept | karancan | ||
| Jan 3, 2019 at 11:31 | history | edited | karancan | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
update 24h later
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| Jan 3, 2019 at 6:21 | answer | added | davidbak | timeline score: 10 | |
| Jan 3, 2019 at 3:35 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jan 3, 2019 at 16:29 | |||||
| Jan 3, 2019 at 2:55 | answer | added | Délisson Junio | timeline score: 5 | |
| Jan 2, 2019 at 21:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackTravel/status/1080569579343134720 | ||
| Jan 2, 2019 at 13:26 | comment | added | jf328 | It could be a sales trick exploiting the anchoring effect (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring). They are willing to sell at the lower price (Expedia price - commission), but list a high price at a different place. So people who see both can hopefully snatch the "bargain" without too much thought. | |
| Jan 2, 2019 at 12:08 | answer | added | Tor-Einar Jarnbjo | timeline score: 75 | |
| Jan 2, 2019 at 5:16 | answer | added | Zach Lipton | timeline score: 53 | |
| Jan 2, 2019 at 3:44 | history | asked | karancan | CC BY-SA 4.0 |