With ‘Fare Prediction’ & ‘Fare Alerts’, ixigo uses past trends and prices to tell its users whether they should book a flight or wait for the fare to drop further. It also constantly watches for price drops to notify users when it’s the right time to book
In an attempt to enable its users to book flights at the best possible prices, leading travel metasearch, ixigo has announced the introduction of an all new feature, ‘Fare Intelligence’ for flight bookings. Bundling together two main functions – ‘Fare Prediction’ & ‘Fare Alerts’, ixigo uses past trends and prices to tell its users whether they should book a flight or wait for the fare to drop further. It also constantly watches for price drops to notify users when it’s the right time to book.
An ixigo study shows that the chances of the current flight fare being the best, on first flight search are generally about one-third. In the other two-third cases, users would have benefited by waiting to book. In order to solve this traveller paint point, the company has come up with the fare prediction feature which derives the best future date for one to book their flight with almost 90% accuracy. For instance, if there are chances for a flight’s fare to go down by say Rs.950 over the next 3 days, ixigo will prompt the user to wait.
Not just this, ixigo also keeps track of a user’s preferred travel sectors and sends them a fare alert as soon as the fare drops. For instance, if one is looking for a flight from Delhi to Mumbai for the 10th of May and the current fare is Rs.2700, if the fare drops to Rs.2400 the next day, ixigo will immediately send out an alert to notify the user via mail & push notification. User’s can also set a fare alert manually for a sector of their choice.
Commenting on this new feature, Rajnish Kumar, ixigo CTO & Co-Founder said, “We’re really happy to launch a feature that not only helps our users make pocket friendly travel bookings but also doesn’t push them into making hasty purchase decisions. Now we end up inevitably telling our users to not book a flight and wait almost 70% of the times after flight search. We believe gaining user loyalty is much more important than driving immediate conversions, which will be possible only if we help them make booking decisions that are in their best interest. Our cutting edge technology guarantees near accurate fare predictions and alerts each time!”
ixigo Fare intelligence is available on the ixigo website, as well as both the android & iOS versions of the ixigo flights app. Currently, fare prediction is available only on domestic flight searches, for a travel date which is upto 30 days in the future.
