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p/getlostDeals on empty airline seats for spontaneous travelers
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Chris Messina

GetLost - Deals on empty airline seats for spontaneous travelers

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Top Hunter
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GetLost specializes in cheap, last-minute (less than 3 weeks before departure), surprise getaways. By working with airlines to identify empty seats, we secure exclusive deals on flights and reward travelers for their flexibility.

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Janet Gotwill
Current outbreak might not be the best time for lunch. Good luck.
William Huang
Maker
@janet_gotwill Hey Janet, thank you for the feedback! While the current outbreak certainly does not invite travel, we wish to use this period to gauge/understand the demand and interest in cheap and last-minute mystery travel, especially with the increasing number of flights that are departing empty. Once the outbreak subsides (and when it is safer to travel), we wish to provide a reliable way of traveling without breaking the bank. In the meantime, we encourage everyone to sign up for our newsletter to stay in touch, which helps us secure better deals with airlines.
Martin LeBlanc
@janet_gotwill @williamhuang12 "Once the outbreak subsides (and when it is safer to travel)," ... and as Janet pointed out: "Current outbreak might not be the best time for launch."
John Palmer
It's irresponsible to launch and run a service like this right now.
Adam Kaplan
Maker
@john_c_palmer Hey John, I appreciate the concern, and understand the timing isn't great. Our goal with this launch is to demonstrate interest in our product (which doesn't necessarily require flying or even leaving a safe, socially-distanced apartment!), so that we can secure airline agreements and continue improving our service to be ready when things get better. Newsletter signups, upvotes, and support across social media help us demonstrate this. Since we are facing a threat of unknown duration, we want to be able to learn as much as we can in the current environment. I urge everyone to follow local and national guidance about traveling and social-distancing, and I hope that everyone stays safe during this uncertain time.
John Palmer
@adam_kaplan1 The product currently encourages people to take advantage of cheap flight prices to travel within the next week...you could turn that off.
Adam Kaplan
Maker
👋Hey ProductHunt, I’m Adam, one of the cofounders of GetLost. I am excited to announce that we are launching our beta to make cheap last-minute travel a reality! We were recently featured in The Points Guy by our first traveler, and are looking forward to more great feedback from the PH community. Even if you are not ready to book yet, please join our newsletter to stay updated with our product for when you’re ready to travel -- this will help us gauge interest and secure even better deals in the future. 📖Story As an avid traveler who has visited over 100 countries, I have always been frustrated by the astronomical cost of last-minute flights. These high ticket prices are paradoxical since over 128 million empty airline seats depart empty every year. This happens because airlines do not have efficient ways to distinguish between destination-inflexible business travelers and flexible leisure travelers. After too many lost weekends and missed opportunities to travel, @williamhuang12 and I teamed up to fix this. 🛠What is GetLost? We are an online travel agency designed for destination-flexible travelers. Rather than selecting a single destination, our travelers choose the theme of their trip, e.g. Caribbean, where a traveler would visit one of San Juan, St. Thomas, Saint Martin, or Aruba, and discover their destination after booking. Travelers can customize their travel dates, flight times, and to exclude a destination they don’t want to visit, then pay and discover their destination. Because of this design, we are able to fill empty seats without sacrificing airlines' revenue from valuable business travelers... Effectively creating our own exclusive last-minute deals and sales. 💰How do we make money? We make money by saving you money. Since we are providing a service to both airlines and travelers, we will operate on a commission-based model. We plan to take a small markup on the trips we sell, and once we expand to provide hotels and other travel experiences, we plan to make additional commission through selling those travel products as well. For our beta, however, we are not adding any markup on our flight product (and are, in fact, marking down flights)! 🚀Just for ProductHunt We are running a flight giveaway during our beta, giving away roundtrip flights for two to our Caribbean destinations. After completing the other tasks, enter the code “PH20” to get an additional 20 entries/chances to win. Join here or visit the “Win Free Flights” tab on our website. You can also enter the same code on our check-out page (“PH20”) to get $20 off your first booking with us! I look forward to hearing your feedback on our product, will be around all day to answer any questions. Especially once the current COVID-19 outbreak improves, I would love to send some PH members on awesome trips (without breaking the bank!). Happy travels and stay safe/healthy! Adam
Tim Yu
Hey Will, congrats on launching! This is awesome under normal circumstances, but not sure if this is the right environment to validate a product like this... both from a social responsibility and bias (in supply & demand) perspective. But I also respect your hustle. Good luck!
Adam Kaplan
Maker
@tim061693 Hey Tim, responding for William as he is busy at the moment, thanks for the concern and feedback. While the current circumstances are unfortunate, today's launch has been super helpful for our ability to demonstrate excitement in the product, and will enable us to continue building so that we are ready when things start looking up. Thanks for the support!
William Huang
Maker
@tim061693 Hey Tim, I apologize for the late response. I was able to see Adam's reply earlier but wanted to respond personally once I had the time. To shed some light on our thought process, we believe the key to helping airlines in the hopefully not-so-distant future occurs when the aviation industry begins to see an uptrend in demand following the containment of COVID-19, where customer segmentation and improvement in sales/operational efficiencies become even more vital to airlines as they recover. As Adam said, this launch on PH has enabled us to demonstrate quantifiable excitement and interest in the product, which will help us work with airlines to create better flight deals. Thank you for taking the time to drop a comment and give us feedback (and the compliment!), it really does help us iterate and think critically about our product and vision. If you would like to connect/chat more, feel free to DM me (or email me at williamhuang@flygetlost.com) :)
Alfonso Rodriguez
Congrats on the launch Billy
William Huang
Maker
@alfonso_rodriguez1 Thanks Alfonso!
Dhruv Bhatia
Interesting idea. Don't see any availability beyond April 4th for departure, is it primarily for near term travel?
Adam Kaplan
Maker
@dhruv_bhatia Thanks Dhruv! We are focusing on last-minute flights only for now, meaning that we make bookings available within a 21-day window. This is because airlines tend to raise prices to match business travelers' willingness to pay within 21 days before departure, and therefore this time frame is where we can offer the most value to both airlines and flexible travelers to start.
Dhruv Bhatia
@adam_kaplan1 Makes sense. Any idea on what savings are possible if I'm destination agnostic? Curious if you've got any case studies / data on this 🤓
Adam Kaplan
Maker
@dhruv_bhatia If you are relying on public fares, usually it will get increasingly difficult to find cheap options (even comparatively) as you get closer to departure. Flexibility is powerful, and we believe that current travel providers don't reward it sufficiently. Our goal is to offer flights 15-30% off of public fares depending on the dates, route, and potential destinations. Beyond our product, there are sometimes outliers for last-minute bookings, and by using a tool like Google Flights' Explore you can quickly filter and discover some cheap options. Regarding data, once of my favorite pieces of research on flight pricing is done annually by CheapAir, and the latest one can be found here. The DOT's Transportation Stats and Form 41 data are also super useful for fares, financials, flight load factors, and more. Happy to talk flight data in DM (@adamjaykaplan on Twitter as well) more with you if you'd like 😄
Leo Bassam
I love the name 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Adam Kaplan
Maker
@leobassam Thanks Leo! 😂
William Huang
Maker
@leobassam thank you Leo!
Ryan Yao
I’m not too sure about the timing too, but I like this idea. Please expend to Canada in the future.
Adam Kaplan
Maker
@ryan_yao Thanks Ryan -- We'll be able to expand to new cities once we make additional progress with airline partnerships, and launching now has helped us move closer to that goal even if the timing is unfortunate. I appreciate the support 😄
Brianna Singer
Wow I can't wait to use this! Great UI design!
Adam Kaplan
Maker
@brianna_singer Thanks Brianna!
Lusine Magauzyan
omg this is essential
William Huang
Maker
@lussvontrier thanks Lusine!!
Adam Kaplan
Maker
@lussvontrier Heh, thanks -- we hope so! 😄
Sven Kudszus
Cant wait to test it.... after the current situation
Adam Kaplan
Maker
@sven_kudszus Thanks Sven, please stay safe and healthy in the meantime!
Adam Kaplan
Maker
Hey ProductHunt, thanks again for all of the support today, and thanks to the awesome @chrismessina for hunting us! We are looking forward to offering more great trips once the current COVID-19 situation improves and it is considered safe and advisable for people to travel regularly again. We'll be working to make the product even better in the meantime. You can help by sharing feedback, joining our newsletter, telling your friends about us while they combat cabin fever, and most importantly staying safe, healthy, and ready to travel once things get better. Happy virtual travels! Adam
Evan Dew
Testing this out in a next weekend! So far the booking process was a breeze, had the destination in under 24 hours so was able to make the rest of our arrangements well enough in advance!
William Huang
Maker
@evan_dew Hey Evan, thanks for booking with us. Enjoy your trip!
Maikal
Quite similar to other services like Waynabox isn’t it?
William Huang
Maker
@miguel_039 Hi Maikal, thanks for taking the time to comment. The main difference between us and other mystery travel providers is our focus on cheap, last-minute prices that are cheaper than publicly available fares, negotiated exclusively with airlines. We are able to do this by selling empty airline seats that would otherwise go unsold.
Adam Kaplan
Maker
Edit: William beat me to responding! His point about cheap-last minute prices is very important, because many "surprise travel" companies focus on departures at least 4 weeks in advance. The rest of my response hopefully helps to contextualize this as well @miguel_039 Hey Maikal, Eurowings' Blind Booking/Lufthansa Surprise are applying a similar concept to their own flights ex-Germany, and although I am not too familiar with Waynabox, it seems they are working on a similar concept for flights across some of Europe -- looks great. We want to expand the idea of "surprise trips" and flexible products across the travel industry, and particularly to bring them to the US in a way that makes sense for US-based travelers to maximize their vacation time. Working directly with airlines (and hotels/tour aggregators) is a key part of this strategy, since we want to become an OTA/revenue management company more than just a travel agency. Time will tell how our approach works, but I am optimistic!
Sofia Jennings
Cool idea, but sadly, it only works with departures from NY. Good luck growing guys!
Elva Fu
Such a smart take on getting budget tickets! I featured it on my new travel resource site that just launched. Feel free to check it out and let me know if you'd like any of the info changed~