Everyone likes a good travel search engine. Very few people make travel arrangements without first trying their luck on at least one of them. Even after a lot of shopping around, one always wonders: “Is this the right price, or will it get any cheaper?” Now there is a site that tries to answer that question for your before you buy. Farecast.com provides predictive information on rates to help you make the best travel purchase decisions — no more missed deals, always the right price.

What is Farecast?
Farecast.com is a travel search engine like no other. It not only searches through all airline web sites and travel-engines, it also advises you when to buy. By predicting when prices are going to be lowest, Farecast will help you find deals on flights and hotels. Once you find something you like and decide to make a purchase, you will be redirected to the website that actually offers that great deal. Farecast does sell something called a “Fare Guard”. When you see a fare you like, you can buy a Fare Guard that will enable you to protect that fare for seven days. So if the fare for your trip increases by the time you are ready to buy, Farecast will pay out the difference.

How does Farecast work?
Farecast searches through billions and billions of airfare data to come up with a trend in airfare prices. In addition to computer technology Farecast also uses real live people to go over the data, perfecting the pricing trend even more. This trend is then used to come up with predictions for future air travel prices.
All air travel price predictions come with what Farecast calls a “Confidence Level”. This is how Farecast ranks the accuracy of a price prediction. A “Confidence Level” is based on performance of similar past predictions.
For Hotels, Farecast uses something called a “Rate Key“ which works similarly as the Confidence levels.
When you submit a trip itinerary, Farecast advises you to either go ahead and buy, or hold off for a while and wait for a better deal. The level of confidence and the Hotel Rate Key Farecast adds to that advice should help you decide what to do.

How did Farecast start?
Farecast started out as the subject of a research paper done by Oren Etzioni, of the University of Washington Department of Computer Science & Engineering, and colleagues. These researchers were able to predict airfare pricing trends using past sales, volume and other historical data. From there, the concept grew into a very successful internet search engine.

Next time you are going on a trip, give Farecast a try.