Their dream is that they'll be able to just use facial recognition, or grab your ID from your cell phone, or force you to sign up for an account with them so they have all the info they need to pull up your credit history, yearly income, the size of your household, a list of your recent purchases, and whatever else they can get from data brokers all just to make better guesses about your wealth and how much money they can squeeze out of you rather than just using your IP address or your useragent, and that's in the works (https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2017/11/17/a-special-p...) but until they can shift public perception away from viewing that sort of thing as being discriminatory and exploitative, or until everyone in an industry is doing it too (airlines and hotels) it's still seen as too risky. see https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-019-00224-3
>Yes it is. That's why people who book flights using an Apple computer will pay more they're pricing based on their best assumptions about your income level.
There is no claim of this on the article you linked and no proof of it. It says “could be”, which is unsubstantiated.
That is from 10+ years ago, and it was a travel agent (Orbitz.com) charging more for hotel nights (increasing their cut).
The hotel itself never charged Mac users more, and I have never seen or heard of Hyatt/Marriott/Hilton/etc websites charging based on which operating system they think the query is coming from.
I have yet to see proof that airlines or hotels or car rental companies directly put out different prices to customers based on the device being used, or even anything else.
What they do do to price discriminate is sell via opaque pricing, e.g.
Or discounted volume pricing for travel agents who promise to pay a minimum and then the travel agent is on the hook for organizing a group of travelers.
But those are both different than price discriminating based on Windows/Mac.
> I have yet to see proof that airlines or hotels or car rental companies directly put out different prices to customers based on the device being used, or even anything else.
That's much less fair, but try this which explicitly states that airlines in the US set prices according to a customer’s personal information.
> That's much less fair, but try this which explicitly states that airlines in the US set prices according to a customer’s personal information.
No, it does not. Your catala consulting link is about what hotels could do, and it is nothing more than what you learn about price segmentation in microeconomics 101.
This is a valid link, but still not about hotels in the sense that most people use for tourism/visits friends/family and work.
It is about casinos using technology to automate how to entice their whales, which they already did using “comped” rooms and upgrades and whatnot in exchange for gambling.
I have yet to see evidence that an airline website presents different prices to customers based on the device they are using (the original
claim), nor do mainstream hotels like Hiltons/Marriotts/IHG/Wyndham/Choice/Accor/etc.
They very well might in the future. And in some broad sense, currently do via benefits for frequent customers via rewards programs, but as of now, there is no automated pricing system that drills down to the individual level.
Yes it is. That's why people who book flights using an Apple computer will pay more (https://www.imore.com/mac-users-might-be-paying-more-pc-user...) they're pricing based on their best assumptions about your income level.
Their dream is that they'll be able to just use facial recognition, or grab your ID from your cell phone, or force you to sign up for an account with them so they have all the info they need to pull up your credit history, yearly income, the size of your household, a list of your recent purchases, and whatever else they can get from data brokers all just to make better guesses about your wealth and how much money they can squeeze out of you rather than just using your IP address or your useragent, and that's in the works (https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2017/11/17/a-special-p...) but until they can shift public perception away from viewing that sort of thing as being discriminatory and exploitative, or until everyone in an industry is doing it too (airlines and hotels) it's still seen as too risky. see https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-019-00224-3