Traveler’s FOMO Is Real, But One Booking Site Figured Out a Cure

Where to lock in a fare while you waffle about buying it

By The Editors
July 8, 2016 9:00 am

Call it Traveler’s FOMO.

You check an airfare price, but you’re still in investigation mode. So you don’t book it.

Two days later, the fare’s doubled and you’re back at square one. This is a bad, bad feeling: “If only I’d been wiser/faster/more decisive!” It’s a vacation debacle capable of sending even the steadiest mind into a Hamlet-level examination of personal delay.

Expedia is here to make it better, with the rollout of a new feature that allows — on most, though not all, flights — fare holding for a small fee.

Note that this is a worthless feature at the 24-hour mark: airlines are obligated to honor a day-long no-harm, no-foul returns period. But depending on the economics, it could be well worth employing over longer deliberation periods. It’s called TripLock, and it’s similar to services offered on the app Options Away and some airline sites. As far as we know, this is the first instance of a major booking site offering the feature.

So if you’re airline agnostic, it may prove a good reason to dial up Expedia before looking elsewhere.

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