Dummy bookings as indicator of demand

[davidjohnson6]

We all know that in general, airlines use booked seats as an indicator of demand for a flight, and price seats accordingly
How much information value is there in dummy (i.e. not paid) bookings as a predictor of real demand ? I'm not interested in the Internet legends that say airlines change the price the moment you show interest based on a cookie set on your computer. I'm interested instead as to whether a large (or small) number of dummy bookings from a wide range of non-bot sources (filter out certain IP address ranges) can be profitably used to determine whether a ticket price should be changed

[S.o.S.]

I'd say that is a very good question dj6. But you will probably have to wait for an insider to retire and decide to spill some beans!

[Max Angle]

Was there not also a suggestion some years ago that prices looked up on Apple products tended to be higher than from a Windows machine?

[arf23]

I ran a rather nice B&B in the Yorkshire Dales and told staff if they saw a London 0207/0208 (tel:0207/0208)/0203 number on the caller ID to add £2/night/person to the rate quoted. On the assumption Londoners have more wonga and I need it more than them!

[Hartington]

If you book via an agency which uses a GDS (Sabre, Amadeus, Travelport) the GDS not only charges the airline for the booking but for the cancellation as well. The airlines are very hot on spotting such bookings.
If you book direct with the airline hardly any of them run their own reservations computer these days and, much the same as GDS bookings, each booking costs the airline.
Now, that's the basics, in the end the commercial agreement can change things but dummy bookings cost airlines money.
What does that mean for fares? It depends very much on how sophisticated the yield control system is.