Scott Keyes of Scott’s Cheap Flights has traveled around the world. Here’s his trick for paying what the locals pay when flying out of the country. Following is a transcript of the video.
Scott Keyes: My name is Scott Keyes. I’m the CEO and co-founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights.
Let’s say you’re looking to go both to Johannesburg and Cape Town. If you are searching on Kayak, you’ve put in Johannesburg and Cape Town in South Africa, look for that flight price.
It might be — let’s say it’s like $ 200. That’s the price that they’re giving to Americans searching on Kayak.com who don’t necessarily know what that flight should cost or aren’t necessarily doing a lot of comparison shopping on that.
It often times is actually a different price for the South African version of let’s say Kayak, or let’s say Orbitz — wherever you buy flights, the actual in-country version of that might show that exact same flight, exact same times and dates and everything for $ 125 because they know — for folks in South Africa might be expecting a different price point. People in the US who are going to be flying from Johannesburg to Cape Town, typically vacation travelers, leisure travelers, much more willing to spend. Folks who are already in-country might be a little bit more price-sensitive and so by searching on the South African version of the site, a lot of times you’re going to actually get a better rate for, again, the exact same flight, exact same seat and everything.
The one caveat, if you’re doing alternate location ticketing, you’re flying — you’re using the South African version of Kayak to book a flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town, say — is making sure to check the fare rules.
Every once in awhile, this is not common but every once in awhile, a country will have a specific thing in there, it says, “This fare is only available for South African Nationals.” And the price is like, legally has to be different for foreigners there.
Again, this is not common. It’s something you — that tends to be much more common in South America, in Ecuador and Peru. I know a lot of times, the flight from Lima to Cusco or the flight from Guayaquil out to the Galapagos Islands will be a different price for Ecuadorians as for people not from Ecuador or people not from Peru.
That’s not common, but I would just do a couple minutes of Googling, making sure that there’s not like this type of thing for your specific trip.
