AtYourPrice wants YOU to set the flight ticket price
atyourprice is a reverse auction travel site that enables you to quote your ‘desired’ price for the flight ticket. Once the price is quoted, atyourprice’s ticket engine will send the quote to partner sites who can then bid for the ticket.
“atyourprice a market place where price conscious flexible consumers can buy products/services at the price that they are willing to pay and Vendors can dispose of unsold inventory at prices lower than the published price”
Funded by Mumbai Angels, atyourprice game plan is to get into several marketplace (pretty much on the lines of priceline) and airline ticketing is just one piece of the puzzle.
The idea seems to be interesting as cos. would want to get rid of dead inventories at the earliest.
But as far as flight ticketing is concerned, atyourprice does not take travel requests within 5 days of departure – and that makes me wonder why? Since airlines typically will give away unsold inventories at cheaper price only a few days ahead of the travel date.
As far as the site is concerned, there are some basic design flaws which I believe will deter customers to even “try out” the service. For example, you can search for tickets, but atyourprice will not disclose the airline name, flight details which accepted your bid, until you make the credit card payment (which is non-cancellable, non-refundable and non-transferable).
“Your exact travel date, airline, flight and departure time will be disclosed to you once your payment is made. ” – how user friendly is that?
A normal customer will instead hop to ixigo or other sites and check out the price. Right?
The bigger question is whether atyourprice wants to be in ticketing domain or is this just a PoC?
Give atyourprice a dekho and share your opinion.
Related: Interview with founders of Autsun (Anything Under the Sun)
tag:atyourprice
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interesting ………their business model remind me of Razorfinish.com [link not live]
http://www.rediff.com/money/2000/sep/28razor.htm
its 90s all over again .
The business model is the same as the wildly popuplar Priceline.com & Hotwire.com in the US.
The reason they do not reveal the airline info and dates is because it’d defeat the whole reason they are getting discounts in the first place. Ex. If I could tell that Kingfisher might give me a discounted fare for a morning flight, why would I buy a fully published fare? Business travelers care about itinerary information and they would not use this service. Leisure travelers who want to save money and do not care about the airline are the primary targets of this service.
I think its a good model, but I doubt it’ll work. With airlines running close to 90% full, there are hardly any empty seats and most of the airfare is tax anyway. How much can they really discount?
The ‘terms and conditions’ were a bit tricky in the site!
You HAVE TO make payment if a flight is found at your rate irrespective of time/date etc.
But it may be in line with previous post from vikas that airlines may not want to disclose such discounted rates to customers who may or may not fly.
@Prashant – Looks like the bubble is back
@Vikas and Sarang: I agree with your point of view, but "If I could tell that Kingfisher might give me a discounted fare for a morning flight, why would I buy a fully published fare" – won’t you go to Indiatimes auction and bid for that?
I have only one concern- do you know the cheapest price for your ticket? Very often, your ask price > the available ticket price..and honestly, if atyourprice doesn’t want to disclose the price and carrier before payment, I don’t give a damn.
@Ashish – ofcourse your ask price could be greater than the available ticket price. Airlines want you to pay the price you are willing to pay, not what they are willing to sell at (which could be lower when inventory is distressed). As long as you bid a price thats lower than the cheapest published fare in the market, its still a deal.
Anyway, this service may not be for you, its definitely not for me. And that’s the beauty – it works for some and it just doesn’t for others – ensuring that the airlines are discounting for only those who care about price the most.
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