Press Coverage
Members of the press may direct inquiries to pr@farecast.com.
Awards
Webby Award
, May, 2008Webby Awards Gallery
"The Webby Awards honors the very best of the Internet," said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. "Farecast's win is a testament to the skill, ingenuity, and vision of its creators."
Market Sherpa
, March, 2008MarketingSherpa's 2008 Email Awards Gallery
Farecast® receives Silver Consumer Award for Best Automated Series from MarketingSherpa's 2008 Email Awards Gallery.
Conde Nast Traveler
, February, 2008The Ultimate Guide to Travel Web Sites, Winner for Knowing When to Book: Farecast.com
With dozens of new travel sites appearing every year, it's hard to keep track of which ones really deliver. William J. McGee of Conde Nast Traveler has put hundreds of them to the test to reveal the ones that will help you save money, travel smarter and enjoy your journeys more.
Budget Travel
, September, 2007Winner of Budget Travel's 2007 Extra Mile Awards
Farecast® is awarded the Budget Travel's 2007 Extra Mile Award, celebrating the companies that have made travelers' lives easier, more enjoyable, and just plain better. Travel isn't exactly easy these days, and when someone dares to pull off a wonderful innovation, he or she deserves a hand. At Budget Travel, it's our privilege to lead the applause.
Travel + Leisure's Top 25 Websites Award
, September, 2007Winner of Travel + Leisure's Top 25 Websites
Farecast is recognized in Travel + Leisure's Top 25 Websites Award. The Web is an essential tool for travelers, but as booking engines and trip forums evolve and multiply, you have to know where to look-and whom to trust. To help you, Travel + Leisure has assembled the ultimate online guide, from our picks of the top travel Web sites to jargon decoders.
Web 2.0 Awards
, May 9, 2007Winner of Best Travel Site
Farecast predicts U.S. domestic price changes, lets users book airline tickets online and provides refunds if they get their predictions wrong! There's absolutely nothing bad you can say about that!
Travel Industry Association
, April 6, 2007TravelCom Res-Expo Innovator Awards
During this year's conference, Farecast and ITA Software were named the first-ever winners of TravelCom Res-Expo Innovator Awards. Winners were selected based on criteria that highlighted their innovative contributions to the travel industry.
WSA
, March 22, 2007Consumer Product of the Year: Farecast
Farecast is recognized as the Consumer Product of the Year at the 12th annual Industry Achievement Awards (IAA), the annual technology awards gala that recognizes the state's most outstanding technology achievements in a variety of categories, hosted by the WSA, the Washington State's oldest and largest technology trade organization.
PC World
, December 27, 2006The 2007 PC World 20 Most Innovative Products
The 2007 PC World 20 Most Innovative Products Awards honor trend-setting products that have emerged with the convergence of PC technology and consumer electronics. The winners combine unique qualities with envelope-pushing design and function.
Popular Science
, November 7, 2006Best of What's New 2006
"Best of What's New is the ultimate Popular Science accolade, representing a year's worth of work evaluating thousands of products," says Mark Jannot, editor of Popular Science. "These awards honor innovations that not only influence the way we live today, but that change the way we think about the future."
Kiplingers.com
, October 27, 200625 Best Travel Sites
Farecast.com® predicts whether fares on most domestic routes will go up or down. Enter your itinerary and the site will say if you should buy your ticket now -- or if an even better fare is probably on the way. To make its forecasts, the site analyzes past fare trends in airline databases and other factors.
Business Week
, September 25, 2006Best of the Web 2006
| Trip Planning WinnersBusinessWeek.com readers voted for their favorite sites and tools. Farecast.com places among the top trip-planning sites.
TIME Magazine
, August 13, 200650 Coolest Websites
This brand-new "airfare predication engine" calculates whether the lowest price on plane tickets - currently, only for trips out of Seattle or Boston - will rise or fall over the next week, to help you decide the right time to buy.
Frommers.com
, August 9, 2006Editor's Choice: Our Quintessential Online Resource List
We've collected our favorite sites from across the "Internets" that we use when planning our trips (or for when we just want a good read)... (Farecast) An airfare prediction site that helps people decide when and with what airlines to buy to save them the most money.
Articles and Mentions
Washington Post
, February 10, 2008Airfare Web Site Goes International
With the continued weakness of the dollar abroad, budget travelers are pinching pennies now more than ever. Farecast.com recently announced that it would help travelers find the best deals on international flights.
New York Times
, October 28, 2007Fare Watchers: On the Right Track?
Farecast Alerts... Most technically sophisticated alert system of the bunch. Comes with lots of extras, including prediction of whether fare is going to rise or drop, plus a graph showing historic fare trends. Weekend searches also available. Very accurate.
Seattle Times
, February 8, 2008Farecast adds international flights, overseas markets next
The Seattle startup, which offers to save consumers money by predicting airfares, today added information on flights to and from the U.S. It added free predictions for about 200 top destinations in Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean and Canada.
Wired
, February 8, 2008Farecast Goes International with Airfare Price Predictions for World Travelers
Farecast Farecast, the airfare price prediction site for savvy travelers looking for the best deal, has finally moved beyond U.S. borders to offer predictions for those traveling to Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean and Canada.
SmarterTravel
, February 8, 2008Farecast tells you when to buy international airfare
Fare prediction website Farecast has finally gone international!
USA Today
, February 8, 2008Fare forecasting goes international
The popular travel site Farecast.com, which uses historical airfare data and "predictive technology" to advise consumers whether to buy a ticket now or wait for a better deal to materialize, is spreading its wings by adding international fares.
New York Times
, September 9, 2007Finding Bargain Rooms at a Glance
Farecast, known for predicting domestic ticket prices for air travelers, is testing a new feature designed to pull the veil back on hotel prices and let consumers know, at a glance, whether the rate listed for a hotel is actually a good deal or not.
LA Times
, August 29, 2007Compare Hotel Rates With New Farecast Tool
I like it because Farecast maps out the hotels by price, tells you if the hotel's room rate is average - and even better - whether or not you're getting a deal.
Reuters
, August 27, 2007Deal or No Deal? New Hotel Web Service May Have the Answer
Hotel searches on Farecast.com display on a map showing where they're located. The search results are also color coded to show good rates versus bad ones.
LA Times
, July 16, 2007Surfing the Internet before you fly can uncover the best fare
When it comes to airline headaches, the realization that the guy next to you paid a lot less for his seat is right up there with annoyances like missed connections and lost luggage. Farecast.com, attempts to tell travelers when they should buy a ticket, predicting whether a fare will go up or down.
US News & World Report
, May 30, 2007New Ways to Beat High Airfares
Another new site, farecast.com, serves the "strategic" traveler: people who have the flexibility to wait for the lowest fare, even if they don't know whether it's coming in two months or it's already past. In addition to scanning the Web for the cheapest flights, Farecast looks for patterns in pricing data over time to help predict whether fares are likely to go up or down.
NPR Marketplace Money
, May 25, 2007Don't buy your plane ticket just yet...
Farecast.com not only lists the lowest fare out there — $379 for my dates — it also predicts whether that fare will go up or down. It's telling me to wait. Oh, prices could drop by $39 in the next week.
Smarter Travel
, May 15, 2007Farecast moves closer to being the one-stop shop for airfare
Farecast appears to be the only site that can accurately predict (at least some of the time) when you should book a fare for domestic travel, and new features debuting today aim to make figuring out when to book specific travel plans even easier. The site does have some limitations, but it looks like it will be one of the most useful sites in my travel planning toolkit.
Reuters
, May 15, 2007New internet (site) says it can forecast airfare changes
Farecast.com, a new travel Web site that claims it can forecast the rise or fall of air ticket prices, plans to help travelers solve the long standing riddle of how to catch fast-moving and often illogical fare deals. The site, which went live on Tuesday after about a year in beta testing, says it can predict with 75 percent accuracy the direction of air fares over seven days.
New York Times
, April 15, 2007If It's Good, Is It Too Good to Be True?
Farecast first searches for the absolute lowest fare between two cities in the next 90 days. Once it finds that, the site compares that low fare to all the airfares it has on record to see how it stacks up. Then it offers some perspective on why it's a deal, by showing how much that low airfare saves you, on average, compared with fares previously available for purchase.
New York Times
, April 7, 2007Sifting Data to Uncover Travel Deals
Farecast.com, which gathered a following with technology that enables it to predict the direction of airfares on a particular route, is back with another innovation that it says can distinguish the best deals in air travel.
Budget Travel Online
, March 29, 2007How Good Is That Airfare Sale?
Airfare-prediction website Farecast has just launched a free service that's worth checking out. It's called Farecast Deals. The service rounds up airfare sales for 26 major cities, listing deals by weekends, last-minute getaways, weeklong trips, family vacations, and overall best savings.
Technology Review by MIT
, March 28, 2007Mining for Cheap Flights
Farecast's new feature, called Farecast Deals, uses the same pricing data that is collected for fare prediction, but it filters it in a way that mimics popular flight searches, such as last-minute weekend trips. Farecast Deals lets a user know if the ticket price for the deal will rise and how long it will be before the price will go down again, according to predictions.
Seattle Times
, March 22, 2007Two state firms win WSA awards
Seattle-based Farecast.com, which predicts whether airfares will rise or fall, won Consumer Product of the Year.
MSNBC.com
, March 20, 2007Fare deals: Next-gen sites rewrite the rules
Historical data is good; the folks at Farecast.com believe they have something better. Backed by a database of 175 billion (and growing) airfares, the company predicts whether airfares will rise, fall or hold steady over the next seven days and whether consumers should buy now or wait for a better price.
TMJ4 Milwaukee
, March 9, 2007Land Cheap Airfare
Many of us hold off, hoping prices will dropÉand the deals end up flying away. But a new service promises to protect consumers from getting burned by price changes.
NBC2 Fort Myers
, March 5, 2007New service could save you money on airline tickets
"I would like to know someone in the airline industry that could tell me when to book it," said LaFlamme. Now there is Farecast.com - a travel search engine with a twist. It doesn't just hunt for flights and prices, it also looks at historical data and predicts whether the lowest price quoted will rise, hold steady, or fall over the next week.
Smarter Travel
, February 15, 2007Farecast: Predicting airfares?
Farecast, a new online service, is trying to take the guesswork out of the when to buy question.
KETV7 Omaha
, February 5, 2007ConsumerWatch: Sites Want To Smooth Fare Turbulence
At Farecast.com, a service called "fare guard" costs $10 and guarantees the airfare listed on its site will remain valid for one week, or Farecast.com will make up the difference.
CBS 11 Dallas-Fort Worth
, February 5, 2007Get The Lowdown On High Flying Airfares
So imagine if you had the ability to predict when a fare goes up and down, like looking into a crystal ball -- well not really. You just need a computer, a city to fly to and a certain website.
It's called Farecast.com.
Chicago Tribune
, February 4, 2007Locking in a fare
Given the fluctuation of airfares, who hasn't looked up a flight online and wondered: Should I buy now? If I do, I might miss a sale. If I wait, the fare might skyrocket.
Now there's a way to hesitate for up to seven days, yet not lose out. Farecast.com, a Web site that launched nationally last fall, could already tell you the average lowest fares between any of 75 U.S. cities, plus predict whether current prices would hold steady, drop or increase. Now, the site is putting money on its predictions with a new product that is basically an insurance policy for domestic airfares.
Washington Post
, February 2, 2007Booking a Flight: An Eight-Step Plan
(Step) 1. Look at historical data. A new generation of travel Web sites is giving consumers the upper hand when it comes to fares. By examining pricing history, the sites tell you if fares are heading up or down, or alert you to unusually low fares. At http://www.farecast.com/, for example, do an airfare search, and the site not only makes a prediction, but indicates how sure it is of that prediction.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
, January 31, 2007$12 million for Farecast to work on air forecasts
Farecast has landed $12.1 million that the Seattle online travel startup will use to roll out its airfare predictions for international destinations and expand into new travel categories such as hotels. Both offerings are slated to debut this year, though Chief Executive Hugh Crean declined to provide specifics Tuesday.
Seattle Times
, January 31, 2007Farecast.com raises $12 million in VC funding
Seattle-based Farecast.com, which helps consumers decide when to buy an airplane ticket, plans to announce today that it has raised $12.1 million in venture capital.
Washington Post
, January 28, 2007Hedging Your Bets
Given the fluctuation of airfares, who hasn't looked up a flight online and wondered: Should I buy now? If I do, I might miss a sale. If I wait, the fare might skyrocket.
Now there's a way to hesitate for up seven days, yet not lose out. Farecast.com, a Web site that launched nationally last fall, could already tell you the average lowest fares between any of 75 U.S. cities, plus predict whether current prices would hold steady, drop or increase. Now, the site is putting money on its predictions with a new product that is basically an insurance policy for domestic airfares.
New York Times
, January 22, 2007An Insurance Policy for Low Airfares
FARECAST, the Internet start-up that made waves last year by predicting ticket prices for air travelers, is putting its money where its mouth is.
USA Today
, January 18, 2007Online oracles promise to ease your airfare angst
Attempting to cash in on the capricious rise and fall of airfares is like trying to handicap a horse race or time the stock market: an exercise in frustration. But by analyzing historical pricing data, a new breed of travel websites promises to help consumers decide whether to click now or hold tight and hope for a better deal later.
CNN.com
, January 17, 2007Buy it now or hope for a better airfare tomorrow?
Airfares rise and fall in ways that are impossible to predict – until now, according to a company called Farecast. Its crystal ball is historical airfare data – some 150 billion (and counting) "airfare observations" – that the company uses to deduce whether prices will go up or down on a particular route.
New York Post
, January 9, 2007Surf’s Up the Sites You Can’t Leave Home Without
Best New Website – It's like talking to your broker – "Buy!" "Don't buy!" – but about airfares. Punch in dates, destination (there are now 40 airports) and find out how the market's been doing over the past 72 days and, based on that, what you might expect in the future, and whether or not to buy now.
The Gazette
, December 30, 2006Everything you need to make the best of air travel
Enter your itinerary, and it recommends whether or not to buy. If you decide to buy, it then helps you book directly from the airline.
It also shows you a 90-day fare history for a trip and tells you how confident it is in its prediction (shown as a percentage value).
Chicago Tribune
, December 10, 2006A Suitcase of travel info--and other help on the Web
Every now and then something truly unique emerges from the flood of "me-too's" that come and go with such regularity across the Web. (Farecast) opines as to the ideal time to purchase a ticket... "We use data-mining algorithms to search for patterns, in the accumulated airfare data, which are associated with significant price changes. These patterns are represented and stored in models, and the models are then rigorously trained. Once created and trained, we use these models to predict the future."
The Australian
, December 9, 2006To buy or not to buy? That's the question
When a traveller runs a search using a flight date and time, the site shows a 90-day fare history for the trip and makes a prediction on whether prices will rise or fall. It also indicates how confident it is in its prediction.
Best Life Online
, December 1, 200621 Rules of Stress-Free Travel
Remember, once you make an airline reservation, you have 24 hours in which to book it. During that 24-hour window, you can go to the Web and see if you can beat that human-being deal. Be sure to check out farecast.com, a new site that actually predicts airfare prices on routes at the 55 busiest airports in the U.S. It's a good guide.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
, November 13, 2006Farecast rolls out 'insurance' on airline price hikes
The privately held Seattle company will begin testing a new product today called Fare Guard that refunds money to online ticket purchasers in some instances if the company's predictions turn out to be wrong.
Kiplingers.com
, November 2, 2006Five Ways to Get Home for the Holidays
Farecast.com, which predicts whether fares on 2,000 domestic routes will go up or down, also has a flexible search option that lets you see not only a range of prices for flying on different dates but also into alternate airports. Enter your itinerary and the site will say if you should buy your ticket now -- or if an even better fare is probably on the way.
Charleston Post and Courier
, October 16, 2006Farecast helps avoid sky-high ticket prices
The Web site not only calculates if the price will rise or fall, but by how much. It gives a "confidence" score of how reliable its estimate is and a recommendation on when to buy.
Travelers can also pull up the fare history of a particular route to see how the airlines have tinkered with the rate in the past 90 days.
Time.com
, October 15, 2006The Next YouTubes
There are plenty of good travel sites, so any new entry needs to have a better idea. Farecast.com uses fearsome computer power to predict the direction of plane fares. That helps travelers figure out the optimum time to buy a ticket.
KNXV ABC 15
, September 27, 2006Farecast.com
Are you planning a trip? Now may not be the best time to book that flight. Daphne tells you how to figure out the best time to buy your ticket to ensure the cheapest price. Visit www.farecast.com, a website that predicts when prices will go up or down.
Washington Post
, September 10, 2006Hello, Good Buys: Four Sites That Offer Fare Help
What it does best: Even though it's still in the testing phase, the site already has plenty of a wow factor. Tell it you want to fly between Dulles and Boston on specific dates, for example, and it'll come up with flight choices. Also, one of five different colored arrows indicates which way fares are headed, and how much confidence the site has in that prediction. Request a flexible search and the site will compare fares between two cities over a 30-day period.
Our grade: B+ . . . with strong potential for an A as it increases its workload with additional airport results.
KTVK Phoenix 3 News
, September 9, 2006Web site offers leads on dirt-cheap airline tickets
According to the McDonalds, farecast.com was pretty accurate. And after checking out the site, there was only one thing Tim didn't like.
"I don't like to look back here and see that I overpaid," Tim said. "But at the time I thought I was doing the right thing."
KOMO 1000 News
, August 28, 2006To Buy Or Not To Buy? Now An Airfare Answer
"Using data mining techniques, sophisticated computer algorithms, and a lot of data, we could actually help people with this problem, we could help people know when to buy™ their airline tickets," says Etzioni.
Dallas/Fort Worth Channel 8
, August 24, 2006Three helpful Web sites
Even if you travel only occasionally, Farecast can give you a fare advantage.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, August 23, 2006Farecast helps with travel decisions
The site predicts future fares through a complicated algorithm that meshes data on historical fare patterns with recent development and planned future events.
"It's a great product," said Bob Harrell, president of New-York based travel consulting firm Harrell Associates.
eyefortravel
, August 22, 2006Farecast.com to provide free airfare predictions from over 55 US cities
Star-Telegram
, August 21, 2006Site offers airfares past, present, future
Ever bought a plane ticket only to see the fare drop the next day? North Texans can now use a Web site that says it offers a way to avoid that situation.
KGW Northwest News Channel 8
, August 21, 2006Your Money Your Business
Seattle-based web site could revolutionize booking online travel.
WSB-TV Atlanta
, August 21, 2006When Is The Best Time To Buy Airline Tickets?
Starting today, a new travel web site can help Atlanta travelers figure out when is the best time to buy airline tickets! Consumer Advisor Clark Howard tried it out, and says this is one tool to help you book and save.
It helps with that dilemma, "Do you pull out that credit card now or do you wait?" Clark expects their recommendations to be even more accurate in the coming months as the site gathers more pricing data.
Seattle Times
, August 21, 2006Farecast expands online services
Seattle-based airfare prediction Web site Farecast has pushed up the expansion of its newly launched online service, announcing today that travelers in more than 55 cities can now browse domestic fares from their home airports. The site, www.farecast.com, gives air travelers predictions about whether a fare is likely to go up, go down or stay the same over time.
New York Times
, August 21, 2006A Predictor of Airfares Adds Cities
The company said that starting today it would predict prices for airfares on routes serving the 55 busiest airports in the United States. That number includes several airports, like West Palm Beach, Fla., and Ontario, Calif., that travelers use as alternatives to the busiest airports.
Wall Street Journal
, August 18, 2006See if Airfare Truly Is Cheap
Wired News
, August 18, 2006Casting Net For Better Airfares
A recent search for flights from Boston to Denver, for example, predicted with 80 percent confidence that the lowest fare between the two markets would jump by at least $50 within a week, and recommended buying at the current price (four days later, fares had indeed jumped, by $42).
"It is one of the most impressive technology applications I have seen since starting in (the travel) business in 1981”(Henry Harteveldt, a vice president at Forrester Research).
Internet Travel News
, August 9, 2006Search, Shop or Sell
(Farecast) allows the user to make informed decisions about a purchase timetable. For anyone who has missed the "window of opportunity," this is a godsend.
KUOW 94.9
, August 1, 2006The Works [14:15]
"They are doing their homework... they will give you a prediction as to where now is a good time to buy or when the prices might be dropping in the future."
TIME Magazine
, July 18, 2006To Buy Or Not To Buy?
That is the question that vexes travelers seeking air tickets--buy, or wait in hope of a price drop? Thanks to computer scientist Oren Etzioni, an answer may be just a few mouse clicks away.
Today Show
, July 13, 2006Cheap Tickets, Finding Lower Airfares
Several new websites try to help travelers cope (with changing airfares)... Farecast.com uses so called data mining techniques to predict whether prices will go up or down.
News 10 Now
, July 11, 2006Farecast.com lets you predict airfares
Enter Farecast, on the web at www.farecast.com, the first airfare prediction website. Simply put, this website tells you whether airfares are going up, going down or staying the same in the next seven days. That lets you decide whether to buy that ticket now, or wait for a drop.
Wall Street Journal Radio
, July 11, 2006Tuesday Travel Update
Farecast.com is a site that feels it can make accurate forecasts of whether prices are going up or down by evaluating how ticket prices have moved over time and crunching massive amounts of current data.
Wall Street Journal
, July 11, 2006Homing In on Lower Airfares
Farecast spent three years developing its system, which crunches huge amounts of data including indicators of airline inventory, pricing history and consumer demand. Farecast doesn't replicate the "yield management" systems that airplanes run, which try to maximize revenue generated by each airline seat. Instead, Farecast evaluates price movements over time -- what happened to the actual prices airlines posted.
WCVB- TV 5
, July 10, 2006Site Helps Predict When Airfare Costs Will Rise
Knowing how far in advance you need to buy a ticket on your next flight could save you a lot of money. Here's a site that may help you predict what a flight will cost depending on when you book it.
NPR
, July 3, 2006Tom Banse Interview
Booking airfare can prompt endless second guessing, should I buy now, wait for a sale, but what if the prices shoot up? A Seattle based company has opened a website that calculates the right time to buy for thousands of domestic flights.
New York Times
, July 1, 2006Airfares Made Easy (or Easier)
(login required)Farecast could become a great tool for consumers because it uses much the same techniques that airline computers have used to extract the maximum amount of money from the flying public. It is the latest Web site to harness cheap computing power to hazard predictions on all sorts of everyday things and make the data available to consumers.
International Herald Tribune
, June 30, 2006Searching for the best fare, now or in the future
How do you know the computer is right? You won't know that until after you buy and neurotically check back to see what happened. Testing over the last few weeks suggested it was right about 75 percent of the time, exactly what the company said its overall success rate was.
New York Post
, June 28, 2006A 'Fare' Deal on the Web
A new Web site is getting ready to help summer travelers avoid one of the most annoying parts of the flying experience: watching the price of your ticket drop just days after you bought it.
King 5 TV
, June 28, 2006Seattle company launches airfare prediction Web site
Puget Sound Business Journal
, June 27, 2006Airfare prediction service launches
An airline prediction Web site called Farecast.com was launched Tuesday, using technology developed at the University of Washington to let air travelers know whether fares are going up or down.
Boston Herald
, June 27, 2006Travel Web site predicts air fare costs
In a crowded field of travel Web sites, a newcomer hopes to stand out by not only showing where air fares are headed but also where they've been... Farecast.com will even indicate whether you should buy now or wait.
The Christian Science Monitor
, June 21, 2006Next wave of travel websites feels like MySpace
While it's rare to find a business that sometimes advises a customer not to buy, another "Travel 2.0" site called Farecast.com is doing just that... It forecasts whether the cost of a flight will go up, go down, or stay the same over the next seven days, as well as provides a 90-day history of fares on the route.
New York Times
, June 10, 2006So Many Airfares, So Much Data
(login required)Farecast, a new web service still being tested, monitors and analyzes price data and gives probabilities on when and by how much future fares might rise or fall. The "when" is crucial. Fares tend to fluctuate, but the trick is to know when they will hit their low point. Farecast is designed to predict it for you.
Boston Globe
, June 4, 2006While Other Sites List Airfares, Newcomer Forecasts Where They're Headed
Henry H. Harteveldt , a vice president and principal travel analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, says Farecast is trying to do for travelers something no other website does. "It provides guidance, much as a stock brokerage provides guidance to investors on whether to sell, hold, or buy a stock," he said. "It's the next best thing to being married or related to the vice president for revenue management for an airline."
"It's a very, very sexy concept," Paul English , the cofounder of Kayak, said of Farecast. "If they execute this well, there's a chance they could be a very, very significant company."
Travel Weekly
, May 29, 2006Farecast to Test Site That Predicts Rise and Fall of Air Fares
(login required)Billy Sanez, a corporate communications manager for American, told Travel Weekly that the airline is "going down the road" toward an agreement with Farecast. If new companies create tools that benefit customers without hurting the airline, "then we will look at working with them. Knowledge is empowerment, and that's good for the consumer," Sanez said.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
, May 25, 2006 (Front Page)Making Airfares Less of a Gamble
Farecast tells travelers whether airfares are expected to rise or fall in a given period of time. It then offers tips on whether travelers should buy the ticket now or hold off for a few weeks. Links to fares from major U.S. airlines are provided below the predictions.
Seattle Times
, May 25, 2006 (Business Section)Smoothing the Turbulence of Airfares' Ups, Downs
There are more than enough travel-related sites on the Web, but Farecast hopes to stand out from the rest by actually predicting a rise or fall in airfares. The Seattle startup, currently testing its technology in a private trial, is combining data mining with a vast library of historical airfare prices.
Seattle Business Monthly
, December 2005New Startups of the Year: Farecast Inc.
Farecast Inc. President and CEO Hugh Crean wants to save you even more money when buying airline tickets with a new technology that predicts the best (time to buy).
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
, July 21, 2005Online Travel Company Rebrands as Farecast, Inc.
The Seattle company, now known as Farecast, Inc., plans to announce $7 million in a second round of funding led by Greylock Partners. Existing investors, including Madrona Venture Group and WRF Capital, also participated. Total financing now stands at $8.5 million.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
, October 8, 2004Airfare Fluctuations Launch Startup That Predicts Prices
The value of the service should be clear for any airline traveler who has paid $400 for a round-trip ticket, only to discover that the price dropped $100 the following day. If they had only waited, they could have saved some serious money.
Komo 4 News
, November 7, 2003'Fare' Factor: To Buy Or Not To Buy?
Hamlet (Farecast, Inc.) is designed to save travelers thousands by advising them when to buy and when to wait (to purchase airline tickets).
NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw
, June, 2003The Plane Truth
"You can never quite figure out how the seat you are buying is the same or a better deal than the one in the same row. One word… computers." - Tom Brokaw, NBC News
"Oren Etzioni… is working on a high-tech way to help passengers find the best deals, a project named Hamlet (Farecast)." - George Lewis, NBC News
MSNBC
, May 22, 2003An Elusive Beast: The Cheap Airfare
Hamlet (Farecast, Inc.) collects actual fare prices over time, and then uses algorithms to make a mathematic best guess when the lowest price will next appear.
"What we found, contrary to popular belief, is that there's method in the madness," Etzioni says, again paraphrasing the Bard. "With good probability it can predict: Should you buy or should you wait (to buy your airfare)?"
Wired News
, April 9, 2003Algorithms Key to Cheap Air Fare
Buying an airline ticket can be a nail-biting dilemma: buy now or hold off in the hope that prices will drop?
"Price changes are not random at all," he (Etzioni) said. "They only appear highly unpredictable to people who haven't studied the pattern, but airlines operate on these algorithms. They are complicated, but the behavior is highly predictable."