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  Airfare Booking Strategies

In many places in the world, airlines charge lower prices to locals than to people who are booking from overseas. You can often save significant amounts of money by booking on the local website, rather than on a US or international one.

Airlines, like every other business, want to maximize their revenues. To do this, they practice “price” discrimination—trying to get more money from people who are willing to pay more for tickets and offering lower prices to people who are willing to spend less.

For example, if Avianca keeps the fares between Bogota and Cali low, they will encourage more locals to fly to the coast. However, they know that offering these cheaper prices won’t have much effect on the number of international travelers, who choose to come to Columbia on vacation or business. They can charge those international travelers higher fares without significantly affecting ticket volumes. If you look, you’ll see that domestic-facing websites are charging $25 for the same flight that costs $102 on an international-facing site.

If you can, we always recommend checking the price for a flight on a website “set” to the local country. Most of the time, you’ll see the same pricing you would get from a US-focused site but sometimes you’ll find dramatically lower prices.

An example

Here is the calendar of fares between Bogota and Cali, Columbia, if you were purchasing “from” Bogota.

And here are the same fares when you are buying from Seattle:

Sure enough, here are the listings for the US version of Expedia:

And here are the same flights on LATAM's own Columbian-facing site.  132,610 Columbian pesos equaled $45.87.

Basic tips on finding local fares

• Cheaper “locals” pricing isn’t always available. Many airlines charge the same price regardless of where you buy.
• You are most likely to save money on local flights in less developed countries. Lower average incomes drive the need to provide lower prices to local residents.  
• In most cases, the cheapest prices are available from the same locale as the “origination” city. If you are flying within Columbia, you are best off buying from a Columbia-facing website, if you are flying internationally from Japan, you are best off buying from a Japan-facing website.
• ITA Matrix is the easiest way to check for prices available from a different location. By default, it will set the “Sales City” to be the same as the departure city. However, you can change the “Sales City” to experiment with prices for people who purchase from different locations. ITA Matrix is convenient but won’t always uncover the local prices being charged by the airline, so it can be worthwhile to check the local airline’s website directly. Using ITA Matrix--The Most Sophisticated Airfare Search Tool.

• The websites for most airlines, and the large travel booking companies, let you set your “location” to one of a few dozen “local” sites. Look for a setting at the top or the bottom of the webpage or on the webpage footer. After you do, you should see pricing for people who live in that country.

Expedia's Location Selector


Sometimes, you can control the website’s “language” independently from the “location”. That lets you continue to use the website in English, even when you’ve set your location to another country. If not, you can use browser translation tools to translate the page into English.

Sometimes, you can independently control the currency that is used to display prices. This lets you directly view prices in dollars, even if you may wind up paying with the local currency. Otherwise, you’ll need to convert the prices on your own.

• Make sure you use a credit card that doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees. To take advantage of local prices, you will often need to pay in the local currency.

Using a VPN

An airline or travel site may try to outsmart you by automatically determining where you are shopping from, rather than using the setting on its website. While you can set the website to act as if you were shopping from within that country, they can tell that you are connecting from the United States and will show you the higher international pricing.

If you suspect that this is occurring, you can take the more drastic step of using a “Virtual Private Network” (VPN), so that it looks like you are actually connecting from the desired country. A VPN is a service that directs the Internet traffic from your machine to a server located somewhere else in the world and then connects to the Internet from that location. By using one, you can appear to be located anywhere in the world that you want. Use a VPN to Save Money on Travel

Airfare 101: Find the Lowest Fares

TravelStrategies:*Local Pricing for Airline Tickets/Page