Do travel websites change their prices based on your browser’s cookies?

Travel Myth: By shopping around online for the best deal on a flight, prices go up once you leave one site for another and then return to the initial site.

The idea behind travel websites changing prices lies in your browser’s cookies. For example, Delta’s website saw that you had gone to Southwest’s website after theirs and wanted to snub you for not choosing Delta’s low fares. Upon leaving and returning, both websites raise their rates as punishment for not booking the first time. Also, (again, allegedly) Orbitz, Travelocity and the like see those cookies as well and no longer offer the low fares that they once would have offered because you shopped around for a good deal, you scumbag.

My Take: This kind of a practice doesn’t make sense. If websites raised fares based on your cookies, surely there would be at least one that didn’t. The ones that didn’t would theoretically have the lowest fares all the time, to a point where travelers would notice and evangelize those websites. The business models of Orbitz, Travelocity and other similar companies. center around saving you money on airfare and hotels rather than plunging into your wallet and taking you for more than you want to pay. 

I asked the good people at SmarterTravel.com about price hiking and they agreed, the myth is false:

Still, being travel writer that I hope to be, I tried to debunk the myth myself after some intense Googling of the subject.

What I Found: Across five websites (Delta, Southwest, Orbitz, Travelocity and Kayak), I searched for the same flight: One adult traveling in coach from Denver (DEN) to Baltimore (BWI) leaving anytime on May 6 and returning anytime on May 23. 

I started by clearing my cookies before visiting each website and looking up my flight. Delta had the first leg of the flight with one stop listed at $304. Southwest at both one stop and non-stop listed at $380. 

Orbitz, Travelocity and Kayak all listed the same prices Delta and Southwest’s websites. 

I repeated the process without clearing cookies and…

I got the same prices.

But the price of my flight went up in the five minutes I was away. What gives? Prices listed change depending on the day of the flight. Throughout the day, as you get closer to your desired flight leaving the runway, the price can go up.

Also, as the number of available seats decreases, that can also change the price of a flight. I recently experienced this when booking a trip to Roatan, Honduras. There were four seats left when I looked at Travelocity the first time. I went to dinner and when I came back, there were two seats left and the price had increased by $200. 

The Bottom Line: Travel websites don’t seem to be scamming anyone. Seems they only want to provide a service: to help you wade through all of the prices to find what makes your wallet the happiest. That doesn’t mean that price differences don’t exist, it just means that there isn’t an underlying conspiracy to bankrupt you on your next trip to wherever.

(Photo: Trodel) By the end of this year I will go to London. Nothing is planned yet but you better believe I’ll have walked the streets of London by December 31, 2010.

(Photo: Trodel)

By the end of this year I will go to London. Nothing is planned yet but you better believe I’ll have walked the streets of London by December 31, 2010.