"It promises to go a step further than FareCompare's graphical plotting of the past year's fares. Farecast's goal is to predict the direction fares will go, with a confidence percentage (how confident it is of its prediction) so you can decide whether to buy now or wait."
A neat idea, but it's clearly not quite ready for primetime yet.The
downsides?
1) So far, the site only includes searches from Boston or Seattle.
2) Southwest fares are excluded, which distorts predictions, since a good Southwest fare sale can send the other airlines into a tizzy.
3) If you see a fare you like, you can't always book it through the site. You may still need to go to Kayak, Travelocity, Oribtz, or the airline to buy the fare.
4) With current oil prices, and rising fares, it doesn't take much sophisticated programming to create a site that always suggests buying now.
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I've played around with the service and it's a good start. If you are really flexible with travel dates this could be a powerful tool. But for the average traveler, this could be less than helpful, if not more confusing. It always brings up the question, why can ticket prices change so drastically in short periods of time?
I've got 25 Invites, so if you would like to check out the beta program to just play around with it, or just waste time in the office let me know.
Check out Mark's site. Upgrade: Travel Better
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Tracked on: June 7, 2006 10:33 AM | Permalink to Trackback