I debated whether I should post this in
the Off Topic thread, but I expect that this will grow to become an issue worthy of more extensive debate, so here is a new thread for it.
The website
RV Travel reports that dynamic pricing will roll out more widely in the future.
This kind of practice will likely hit Airstream Interstate owners especially hard, because of the perception that they are "luxury" vehicles (even more so than trailers), which the algorithms are going to know are $100,000 - $250,000 rigs.
In other words, prepare to get price-gouged even more intensely than you already are.
All of us already face this practice in other areas of our lives. For example -
- Amazon is
famous for it. Shopping on Amazon often has me muttering "a fool and his money are soon parted" (Proverbs 21:20, restated).
- Every time I fly to Canada, I first research my options on untraceable public terminals so that I can then pounce on the ticket I decide I want. If I first search in an identifiable way (e.g., via my own IP address) that the algorithms will interpret as "serious captive buyer", they will inflate the prices on me in real time, even as I am in the process of browsing. I need to strike lightning fast if I am to get the best price.
- Where supply exceeds demand, it is possible to turn the tables on dynamic pricing and get vendors to down-bid against each other. I often search for a particular product and then wait weeks or months before pulling the trigger, signalling that I am NOT a serious buyer for that product, and if they want to entice me, they need to do better on the price. During that time, I will get bombarded by successive ads offering me lower and lower prices. Sometimes it's shocking how far those prices can fall.
Anyway, I am not sure what strategies will prove to be most effective when the next generation of AI starts torquing prices for things like campsites. But it's worth discussing in the Interstate context, I think.
Here's an explanatory excerpt from the RV Travel article:
Linear Mode
