Planning for travel

so its supposed to be easy...the internet has simplified things and brought the world closer..i can book flights and hotels anywhere in the world.....read reviews from other fellow travellers..and even subscribe to sites which charge $1 a week for info on that perfect travel/vacation....

but 3 week since starting to plan for my vacation/travel, I have not been able to click on the "confirm" button yet....lack of choice is not a problem...its the abundance of choice..when I click the "confirm" button i should have the satisaction of having secured the best deal..thats what 3 hours of searching on the internet does to me.....its like the stock market..when do you buy? when do you sell??

so for 3 weeks i have observed....and inputted imaginary travel dates into countless company owned and aggregator websites and tried to make sense of things...but unfortunately without success....a trip from MUM..SIN..PHUKET...SIN..MUM was 38k INR at the end of week 2...but at the end of week 3 it was 85k INR.....however, when i split the travel between different carriers , the cost is 38K at the end of week 3.....at the end of week 2, the same split with different carriers was 40K.....

the 2 k does not matter...the increase from 38k to 85k does..but more importantly, its in the lack of a pattern of how rates vary that is interesting....of course theres a certain opaqueness as to how these sites price.....and intuitively I guess, the pattern should be simple...prices should be cheap for early bookings....gradually increase as the date of flight approaches..and fall back a couple of days before the actual date if bookings are available.....unfortunately, the theory does not work...or at least I have not seen it work....

so i have booked my flights today....that is my stake on the ground...over the next 7 weeks I will be monitoring if i could have possibly got a better deal...and i am pretty sure I will find more than a couple of better dals than what i have signed up for today.....the interesting thing is if I can figure out why I could not get the best deal....chances are pretty slim for that one...But if i can, i will start a hedge fund....:))

Cheers!!

:))