For travelers willing to trade certainty for savings, Priceline, Hotwire and a new site called GetGoing are taking some of the mystery out of the opaque booking process.
GetGoing.com, which was officially introduced on March 6, offers a twist on the blind-booking model popularized by Priceline, where you don't find out all the details of your itinerary until after you book. Instead of bidding, you choose two places you would like to visit (say, Miami and Los Angeles), select your travel dates and flights, then enter your credit card details. GetGoing randomly chooses one of the two trips and books your ticket, which you can't change or cancel.
The company aims to help airlines fill empty seats, which are scarce on some routes but still average nearly 20 percent of the tickets a carrier could sell. GetGoing promises savings of up to 40 percent off published airfares, but the coin flip reassures the airlines that they are giving these discounts to leisure travelers, not business travelers who would pay a higher price because they have to fly.
"What's really key to the airlines is discounting seats to the right people," said Alek Vernitsky, GetGoing's chief executive and one of its founders. "By asking people to select two places they want to go and flipping a coin, we are communicating to the airline we just found a discretionary customer."
Here is more information about how GetGoing works, and how it compares with Priceline and Hotwire, both of which have added features to make opaque booking less of a gamble.
GetGoing
WHAT'S NEW The coin-flip booking model. So far, GetGoing works with more than 10 airlines, offering flights to thousands of destinations in more than 50 countries. You can select two destinations in the same or different countries (or states), as long as they are at least 50 miles apart. Unlike Priceline, GetGoing lets you limit the options to nonstop flights, but you will generally save more if you accept a connection. Savings range from 20 to 40 percent off the lowest published fare, Mr. Vernitsky said, depending on the route and how desperate the carrier is to fill seats; you see the full price before you commit. Although you don't find out the name of the airline until after you book, GetGoing displays your departure and arrival times as a half-hour window — e.g. "takeoff 5 to 5:30 p.m." With Priceline's name-your-own-price option, all you know before booking is that your flight will depart between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. and may include a connection — too much uncertainty for some travelers.
COOL TOOLS To prove you're getting a deal, GetGoing posts links to other booking sites like Kayak next to its prices, so you can check what the competition is charging (click the blue "I" button, which is not especially obvious). If you don't have a destination in mind, you can search for places that fit a particular category, like "beaches and sun" or "adventure and outdoors." If you log in with your Facebook account, GetGoing will tell you which of your friends have been to the destination you're considering, making it easy to seek advice.
WISH LIST GetGoing doesn't offer hotel deals, but plans to add them in the next couple of months. It also hopes to persuade more airlines to participate, which would expand the number of its destinations and flight options. A flexible date search would help to avoid separate searches to find the cheapest weekend to travel.
Priceline
WHAT'S NEW To entice customers who were put off by its name-your-own-price bidding model, Priceline created a new hotel booking option called Express Deals last summer. You still don't find out the hotel's name until after you book, but Priceline displays the room rate so you don't have to bid. With Express Deals, you will see a list of amenities the hotel offers (like a pool, fitness center, free Internet access or free breakfast), and some hotels let you select a bed type (for instance, one king or two doubles). Brian Ek, Priceline's spokesman, said Express Deals have discounts up to 40 percent off the hotel's published rates, versus up to 60 percent off with the bidding option. On the airline front, Priceline now sells one-way tickets, and displays recent winning bids on a particular route to help guide bidding strategy.
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