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Comment by casperc | Hacker News Reader

Same for the “18 people are currently looking at this route”.

I know a lot of travel sites do it, but I don’t see how it adds any value for me to know that (if it is even true)

I looked up flights from Windhoek, Namibia to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and there were 34 people currently looking at that route.

So, the site is just posting inaccurate information in an attempt to increase sales. I don't understand how a person or a business can think this is acceptable behavior, and they lost all my trust in a matter of minutes.

“Looking at this route” in context maybe means number of tickets on hold with the airline, or number of searches for that route in the past day on SABRE, as opposed to active users on that site right now.

Trying to give them the benefit of the doubt as to that number being an accurate count of something, though agree it’s a high-pressure sales tactic that turns me off.

I'm not going to give OP the benefit of the doubt. New York to Chicago only shows 18 people looking at that route, so unless this site is trending in Namibia, then the OP has some explaining to do.

As far as I can see, the OP is just pulling numbers out of thin air in an attempt to line his pockets with our money, and I think it's disgusting.

This is a dark pattern akin to booking.com, to create time pressure for you, not provide actual value.

If the latter were true, then sometimes it should say "You are the only one looking at this hotel. Take your time!"

But no. Travelling to the most obscure places across Asia I have NEVER seen anything but hordes people looking at my hotel in Kampong Cham. Probably different dates too.

I am willing to bet it is derived from /dev/urandom adjusted to the size of the establishment.

>Travelling to the most obscure places across Asia I have NEVER seen anything but hordes people looking at my hotel in Kampong Cham

Haha, this is so relatable. Not a long time ago I arrived at my "high in demand, better book RIGHT NOW" guesthouse somewhere in Mondul Kiri Province and had to wake up personnel in their hammocks. Turns out they had no bookings for some days …

> This is a dark pattern akin to booking.com, to create time pressure for you, not provide actual value.

It's only a dark pattern if the number is bullshit. If the number was accurate then it would be a helpful feature, especially if they also took into account conversion ratios on that route and gave the user a real time table for how long they could realistically wait before booking the flight/hotel.

Yeah, that really puts you in the booking.com category of dark patterns. Tricks like that diminish the trustworthiness of a website.

Plus.. 20 people looking at the same hotel, doesn't mean they are looking for the same dates. But for the non-detail-oriented people this forces them to make a hasty decision (that will most likely regret down the line).

I don't agree with the practice, but creating a sense of urgency is very common in marketing.

It's a call to action. If you see that 18 people are looking at that route and there's 1 flight that's really cheap then it's an incentive to quickly book that flight before the last seat is sold out. It's also the reason why other OTAs will list sold out hotel rooms or say "2 seats left" for a flight and why Amazon will put "3 left in stock" for certain items.

this is called 'growth hacking' and now everyone seems to be doing it

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