Airlines, search engines, and booking sites often offer different fares for flights based on information about a particular user, including his country and region of residence, search history, and page visits. Tourists were told that with the help of a VPN, it is possible to deceive this system and reduce airfare prices.
The gray policy of airlines
According to the British edition of Express, airlines do not set a single retail price for flights, constantly adjusting it depending on demand, developments in countries, the location of aircraft, as well as information about customers. To obtain data from users of each country, sites use an IP address, a number that is assigned to each device when connected to the Internet.
It is noted that all this information affects the price of tickets that a person sees on the screen. For example, if he visits the website of an airline or aggregator from a country with a high average income, flights are more expensive.
“Sometimes the device model also comes into play. Travel website Orbitz has admitted to showing more expensive hotel rooms to those who visit the service from a Mac rather than a Windows PC, as the former costs more money and therefore implies a higher income,” – writes the publication.
Also, the media claims that cookies – software that tracks movements on the network – are also used to adjust price tags.
“While a number of the major travel search engines and booking sites deny this practice, users often report that plane and train tickets become more expensive when they revisit a previously visited page to book at a later time,” the publication says.
How to lower ticket prices
To bypass all the tricks of airlines and booking websites, travelers are advised to use a VPN. It encrypts the information transmitted by the device to the website, hides and protects it, and also allows you to change the IP address containing the current location data.
In the VPN settings, you can choose the country in which the device is allegedly “located” and get access to the necessary pages, services, and cheaper flights that a person would not see in other circumstances.
“Using a VPN in itself does not reduce the cost of flights, since there is no universal country where all tickets would be cheap. You will have to experiment and try different options. For example, when flying with airlines of specific countries, such as Turkish Airlines, Singapore Airlines, American Airlines, Air Canada, Qatar Airways and others may find it advantageous to “accommodate” in this country. Similarly, if a person is flying from an airport overseas, local fares may differ,” the publication explains.
To find cheap flights with a VPN, you need to:
- download, install, and run your favorite VPN service on your device;
- select the country under which the traffic will be masked;
- clear cookies in your web browser to delete data about previously visited sites;
- open the selected airline or ticket booking website;
- find suitable tickets, compare prices, and make a bargain.
If the first time you couldn’t find cheap tickets, you can try to select another country and repeat the following steps, including deleting cookies.
To keep track of how prices change based on VPN settings, it’s a good idea to save screenshots or take notes.