If you’ve noticed flight prices increasing every time you search, you’re not alone. Travel experts have revealed a simple browser hack that could help travellers save hundreds on flights.
Ski Vertigo, a leading ski travel company, has revealed that clearing cookies or switching to incognito mode while searching for flights can prevent airline websites from tracking your activity and raising prices based on your search history.
Why Cookies Are Costing You More
When you search for flights, airline websites and booking platforms often store cookies—small bits of data that track your browsing activity. If the system detects repeated searches for the same flight, it interprets this as high interest, increasing fares to pressure you into booking before prices go higher.
Ski Vertigo’s experts say clearing cookies or switching to incognito mode stops websites from tracking your previous searches, resetting the pricing algorithms and often revealing cheaper flight options. Using different devices or browsers can also lead to better deals by preventing the site from matching your earlier activity.
Let’s say you’re booking a flight from London to Geneva for a ski holiday. After multiple searches, the return fare shows as £350. Clear your cookies or switch to incognito mode, and you might see the same fare drop to £300 or even £280. That’s £50-70 saved—money better spent on après-ski drinks or a lift pass upgrade!
This trick becomes even more valuable for long-haul flights, where repeated searches can drive up prices by £200 or more.
How to Clear Cookies on Most Browsers
If you’re unfamiliar with how to delete cookies, here’s a quick guide for the most popular browsers:
Google Chrome:
Click the three dots in the top right corner.
Go to Settings > Privacy and Security.
Select Clear browsing data.
Choose Cookies and other site data, then click Clear Data.
Safari (Mac):
Click Safari in the top menu, then Preferences.
Go to Privacy and click Manage Website Data.
Select Remove All to delete cookies.
Firefox:
Click the three lines in the top right corner.
Go to Settings > Privacy & Security.
Under Cookies and Site Data, click Clear Data.
Microsoft Edge:
Click the three dots in the top right corner.
Go to Settings > Privacy, search, and services.
Under Clear browsing data, click Choose what to clear, select Cookies, then Clear Now.
A spokesperson for Ski Vertigo shared their advice on how to leverage this trick effectively, “Airline websites are designed to play on urgency. If you keep searching the same route, prices often rise artificially to create a sense of scarcity, nudging you to book. Clearing cookies or using incognito mode breaks this pattern, giving you a fresh start and often revealing cheaper fares.
We recommend travellers search multiple times across devices—say, once on your phone in incognito mode and again on a laptop with cookies cleared. This simple change in how you search could result in significant savings. We’ve seen price drops of £30-50 on European routes and even more on long-haul trips.
Advanced travel hackers can try using a VPN because airlines sometimes adjust prices based on the country you’re searching from. For example, a flight might be more expensive if booked from the UK but cheaper if you search from a different region like Spain or the US. VPNs allow you to change your virtual location and explore fares as if you were searching from another country.
Clearing your cookies or using incognito is a quick and easy travel hack that anyone can try—and who wouldn’t want more money to enjoy their holiday?”