When my wife and I went to Egypt ~20 years ago and would be shopping for anything, we decided to test this exact thing out. We'd pick a trinket common to any vendor, like a souvenir pyramid, or a ceramic bowl. We'd pretend to not know each other, and my wife would ask the price in English, and I would ask for price in Russian. Russian price was typically 1/3 that of English. And that's the starting price, to be bargained down.
After the test, all of our souvenir shopping was conducted in Russian.
All right, then another story from the same trip. We're in Hurghada, a Red Sea resort popular with Russians. We go out shopping at night (it's hot, so lots of shopping at night). My wife is on the roll to get bunches of souvenirs for our nephews and everyone possible, so she's picking up I don't know, bangles, skirts, scarves, whatever. It's late, I am tired, so we skip the "I'll speak Russian" thing, so I just sit down and she's doing all the picking. The shopkeeper, who was sitting there watching some sort of local prayers on TV is very excited to have an American in his shop, and is effusive with "oh I am so glad you are an American, that's such a great country, with such great people, such generous people, not like those Russians, those stingy scummy Russians, who would take the candy out your baby's mouth, steal the last socks from the laundry, no, the Americans are rich and good looking, just like you clearly are so wonderful..." and he's going on and on. My wife is trying to not to laugh and tries to interject - "oh yeah, sure, of course, but my husband, he's Russian, so..." - the guy just doesn't listen and plows right over - "oh those evil Russians, always taking from us, always bargaining down the prices, we have families to feed, they'd take the last crumpled pound note from the ground, they'd won't give me enough for my wares to keep my grandmother fed", etc. etc. Well, my wife shrugs and lets him continue to dig, while I just keep quiet. Eventually she decides what we get, and the bargaining starts, which my cue to come in. Just a couple of minutes into bargaining the shopkeeper turns to my wife with wide eyes and affronted manner "Your husband! He doesn't bargain like American", to which she replies laughing "That's because he's Russian!"
We have a rep for being 'loud' (read, more extroverted than a lot of societies) but I'd challenge the assumption that we're known to be ruder than most countrys. At most we're more likely to be ignorant of local norms due to less international travel.
I don't think base sexism would explain it, unless the shopkeeper hates women so much he doesn't even want their money. Or are women assumed to have more spending money in Egypt?
I was surprised to find my airfare go up about 70% for a one way ticket from Mexico City -> NYC, after I submitted payment on the checkout page w/ American Airlines. It was the weirdest thing, payment was blocked and the checkout page refreshed with the updated fare and a note about regional differences related to payment, assuming because of the US address linked to the CC.
This happened to me, Skyscanner quoted the airline's price as (let's say) 300 Euro, a 3rd party site qouted it as 180 Euro. So I followed all the ordering steps at the 3rd party site, entered my CC, hit pay, and the site said "Sorry, the flight is no longer available for that price. The new price is 300 Euro. Buy anyway?". I wish there was a button to tell them to get fucked...
I think this is a different phenomenon than the parent comment -- some of these 3rd party sites seem to update more slowly than the airline's pricing. I.e. it's rare that a 3rd party actually holds airline tickets these days.
This is perhaps a controversial opinion, but at least when it comes to haggling I think this is fine.
The wealth gap between traveling Westerners and the average local in countries like Mexico and Peru is staggering. I recently did a 5 week trip in South America with my (South American) partner and my attitude was to generally just accept whatever price we were quoted rather than bargain down. E.g. for a 2 hour taxi in Cusco you could bargain from $20 down to $15 if you tried, but as someone who earns 6 figures in the US it seemed morally reasonable to not bother (and less stressful too IMO).
There's a difference between "I can afford it", "I must haggle" and just outright trying to rip you off.
The example I often quote was me, a blonde European, in Cuba, just walking down the street. Someone with a rikshaw stopping next to me and going like "City tour! 20$" or something without me making eye contact or anything, just out of the blue. I shake my head, "15$!" and when I turn away because the person apparently doesn't want to accept any no, it's "10$!" - so apparently the actual tourist price would have been 10 but the opened with 20, without me even showing interest. [ofc it wasn't $ but you get the gist of the numbers]
Another fair but PITA is the child penalty when it comes to traveling.
Because the way schools are set up - everyone in a geographic area has to travel on specific weeks. So airlines jack up prices incredibly. Like - from some price that a family might be able to swing to almost medical emergency prices.
I'll be sure to take advantage when the time comes. But if you want to know why on average US people are ignorant of the world vs other western countries - you have your answer.
Potentially controversial view: until kids get to high school, and if they're good students anyway, just have them skip school for a week and go on a trip. They're likely not missing anything important in one week of schooling.
For example, I'm definitely not figuring my son's grade 2 timelines into my travel plans. He loves school and everything, but he can skip it for a week somewhere if that literally saves the family thousands.
Absolutely this. My parents would take an impromptu vacation toward the tail end of winter and every time they basically just told the school 'we're leaving, give him the homework he'll be missing, end communication.'
Years later I was having dinner with a coworker and his teacher wife and explained it to her. "Yeah we'd go to like science exhibits and museums and all, it was really fun!" She was just aghast. Like 'y-you can't just t-take kids out of school?!'
> Years later I was having dinner with a coworker and his teacher wife and explained it to her. "Yeah we'd go to like science exhibits and museums and all, it was really fun!" She was just aghast. Like 'y-you can't just t-take kids out of school?!'
Some people treat their job as if it's the most important thing in the world, to everyone.
Dentists still can't realize that flossing isn't everyone's #1 priority every single day :P
It occurred to me probably years later that there were a ton of things my parents did with respect to my brother and I growing up were, at a minimum, quite unconventional.
Also, schooling for younger children isn't exclusively about the obtaining of actionable knowledge. For some children, it can be disruptive to yank them out of school.
Other families might have a problem that this teaches their children the lesson of "rules for thee, but not for me" --- that it can be okay to ignore rules just because you don't want to follow them. That isn't something that everyone is okay with.
Can you elaborate, so I can strike them off my to-move list forever?
>Also, schooling for younger children isn't exclusively about the obtaining of actionable knowledge. For some children, it can be disruptive to yank them out of school.
Yes. Your child-mileage may vary. My kid doesn't care, one week out of school does not impact him negatively, whereas travel impacts him positively.
>this teaches their children the lesson of "rules for thee, but not for me" --- that it can be okay to ignore rules just because you don't want to follow them.
They can then take great care to ensure the kids understand that this is not, in fact, the lesson. My kid doesn't attend school because "that's the rule, gotta go to school", he enjoys it for the social and the learning aspect, so his showing up to class does not rest upon compulsion either by the parents or the school. If this ever changes, I'll deal with that then. Also, it is of course completely okay to ignore rules you do not think of as important if there are no consequences to breaking them. My responsibility as a parent is to carefully curate the consequences bit to ensure I only enforce non-stupid rules. I want my kids to learn that too.
We did that for a while when they were in elementary school, but by the time you get to middle school, it's much harder. The kids start to have long-term group projects that are a significant part of their grade. Lessons become more linear where missing a step means you can get lost further in.
Thankfully, school systems do tend to stagger their spring breaks so at least there's some variation there.
You're thinking of the children as objects and not people.
Grades and school projects mean a lot to my kids and one of the most important things I'm trying to teach them right now is to have a sense of responsibility and respect for their own work and commitments.
At least for me my thinking is often "Well if I'm going to take time off work to fill the childcare gap then I'd prefer to to go on some adventure with them".
This is what my family did in the '90s. In the beginning, it was easy: we handed the teachers a note and we were on our way. As I got older, the school was less cooperative, and focused on boosting attendance statistics. The ability of parents to request excused absences slowly declined.
Just another casualty of Goodhart's law, it would seem.
In the UK, people do this, but it can result in fines and being taken to court. Schools are measured by their attendance, and parents want to maintain good relations with the school staff, so there's that aspect as well.
> I don't get the scenario you're imagining. Each friend goes away for a week 1-2 times per school year and that's somehow catastrophic?
No, they're saying that there's nobody else for them to play with while on vacation.
Some people, particularly with younger kids, plan vacations that have some sort of child care component to them, which gives the kid opportunity to socialize with other kids their own age (and also gives the parent some free time to do things that they can't do while taking care of their kids). Some hotels offer this as part of the package, as do cruise ships, etc.
> I see, because it's not on holiday. Wouldn't everyone doing this make it more likely that your kid meets a playmate, then?
Currently, everyone with kids takes vacations at the same time. That means that all kids go on vacation at the same time, so whenever they're on vacation, there are likely to be lots of other kids there.
If everyone with kids took vacations at staggered times, fewer kids would be on vacation at any given time, meaning whenever they're on vacation, there are likely to be fewer kids there.
I'm sure other western countries have costs increase during peak travel seasons and their children have limited time off school.
The reason people in the US are less traveled is because you essentially have to cross an ocean to go anywhere. Some people like to go to Canada, but that is pretty similar to the US. Most of the people that I know that go to Mexico stay at resorts for safety concerns.
Edit: I would assume the median number of times an individual has crossed an ocean is still 0. Even for citizens of rich countries. I don't think this number is going to change with the current technology branch being developed by Boeing and Airbus. Maybe in a century Hyper loop, Electric Airplanes, Space Elevators, or trains on floating bridges will have advanced enough to change this to 1 or 2. Maybe a seemingly low-tech solution like Zeplins or Boats can be done fast enough, cheap enough and safe enough for broad appeal.
> The reason people in the US are less traveled is because you essentially have to cross an ocean to go anywhere.
Australians manage to travel more than average despite being an island surrounded by ocean. The need to cross an ocean discourages travel much more in a culture which thinks "two weeks paid time off, don't even think of taking them both at the same time" is an adequate amount of vacation allowance and thinks extended mid/pre-career breaks for international travel are a weird anomaly rather than the norm.
I think another huge difference here is that the Australian continent has ~25 million people living on it whereas United States + Mexico + Canada is ~500 million.
There are far more communities and cultures to explore without the need for overseas travel.
As an American who has spent 6 years living abroad, I think foreigners vastly underestimate the size and diversity of the United States and North American how many meaningful travel experiences can be had despite the fact that there are relatively few national governments
> As an American who has spent 6 years living abroad, I think foreigners vastly underestimate the size and diversity of the United States and North American
Sure, but if you leave the tech bubble my experience is that those other Americans quote something like a single 14h trip by car in the last 10 years as their "remote vacation" experience so I'm not sure how much that really applies. Yeah, you can totally see different stuff with just this, but I have a feeling even trips to other parts of the country are rare for many people.. and even when they live in California they go to Las Vegas, Hawaii, or Mexico.
That said, I'd say at least 3/4 of the "normal tourist" Americans (again, not the tech people) I met here in Germany are from flyover country and not from where you'd expect from the population density map (both coasts), but it's all anecdata.
Could you describe the diversity and the different communities and cultures when exploring the US? I'd love to hear about all the different cultural experiences that can be had, compared to if an Australian were to travel to their common destinations (Bali, NZ, Japan, South Korea, Fiji).
I'm not sure if the variety is greater than what an Australian might experience, but the variety is greater than what many people outside the US think it is.
* The US has 63 national parks. Some of these have cultural and historical significance. Many have biological or geographic significance. We also have over 6,000 state parks, many of which are significant. The variety and sheer amount of public land we have is truly a national treasure. It's really common for people travel for activities such as hiking, camping, hunting/fishing, skiing, mountain climbing, snorkeling, kayaking, etc etc.
* The US exports a lot of culture. It's very common to travel for culture. Concerts, festivals, broadway plays, museums, world class theme parks, mardi gras, fashion week, hollywood tours...
* The US has some of the top international travel destinations. Maimai, Las Vegas, Disney, NYC. D.C. attracts tourist and is very dense in monuments and museums.
* Due to the large amount of worldwide immigration, the US is pretty diverse.
> Australians manage to travel more than average despite being an island surrounded by ocean.
A large fraction of that is to New Zealand and Indonesia, where they aren't crossing an ocean. Sydney to Bali is a roughly six hour 4,600 km flight. That distance won't get you from Boston to Dublin, which is about the shortest international flight from the US to someplace outside of North America. Los Angeles to Tokyo is almost twice as far.
> a culture which thinks "two weeks paid time off, don't even think of taking them both at the same time" is an adequate amount of vacation
Cultures don't think, individuals do. And almost every individual in America doesn't think that two weeks of vacation is adequate. They think having a job and being able to put food on the table is better than not being able to do that. Most Americans are victims of shitty corporate policies. It's hard to push for better working conditions when billionaires have spent millions dismantling the labor movement over the past several decades.
> Cultures don't think, individuals do. And almost every individual in America doesn't think that two weeks of vacation is adequate. They think having a job and being able to put food on the table is better than not being able to do that. Most Americans are victims of shitty corporate policies. It's hard to push for better working conditions when billionaires have spent millions dismantling the labor movement over the past several decades.
The average unskilled Australian teenager doesn't have more ability to put food on the table or negotiating power than the average US software developer, but will be much, much more likely to spend the next six months travelling round Europe (closer to San Francisco than Sydney) without even having to join the Peace Corp or learn a language to prove their worthiness, or to turn down or quit a job that doesn't give them enough holiday entitlement.
Corporate policies and legislative priorities are a product of culture too: it's not like Australian billionaires love their labour movements.
I was up to 3-4 weeks of vacation at a job I had pretty much the whole 90s. During that time, I took a few month-long vacations to places like Nepal. I had coworkers who basically questioned out loud "How could you do that? I could never go away for that length of time." Depends on the company and role of course. (I was subsequently with a very small company and it would have been difficult especially for non-summer months.) Never had an issue and, in fact, they pulled out all the stops when it was time for me to leave to try to get me to stay. But a lot of people assume that norms are carved in stone and they often aren't, especially if you're valued.
In software engineering you can find jobs with 3-6 weeks of vacation a year. Even 4 weeks is long enough to spend 2 weeks abroad and have a enough time left over for a few long weekends and extra time off during the holidays.
Even in my experience that even when you have these several week long PTO positions you don't get to use them. It seems like the PM is always concerned about a timeline or a manager won't approve it unless you give a year lead time. So, I've personally just ignored PTO as part of the benefits as long as it's at least two weeks.
Hopefully this isn't the same for a lot of the folks on here. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to take even a few days off only for it to be denied by a PM or EM or HR because "we're busy".
We also have more staggered school breaks throughout the year. With two weeks off after every term, many more public holidays, and the ~2 month summer break there are a lot more opportunities to go on holiday. As an Aussie dad in the US, I'm struggling to think how I'm possibly going to get them back to Australia when they're at school throughout the entire year.
> everyone in a geographic area has to travel on specific weeks
That sounds like supply and demand 101.
The direct answer here is take your kids out of school whenever it’s cheapest and then have them hang out at home during the “official” vacation period.
>The direct answer here is take you kids out of school whenever it’s cheapest and then have them hang out at home during the “official” vacation period.
That can be difficult to pull off, probably especially in public schools which probably have less flexibility to bend the rules.
But, yeah, it doesn't sound like some great conspiracy. And unless you live near the Canadian or Mexican border, of course it's generally going to be more expensive to travel to another country compared to living in France.
?? Is it more difficult than just telling the teachers you're doing it? Give them a bit of notice, get the homework in advance, what are they going to say?
exactly - did it all the time with my kids, we told the teachers ahead of time, the school didn't like it - we didn't care. Somehow our kids all survived, went on to good colleges and all graduated with great careers, even missing a few useless weeks of school.
I grew up in the US in the 90s and 00s and I took a week off here and there during the school year with no issue. Less so in high school, but I do not recall anyone caring in elementary school. I remember other kids doing the same, and the teacher would just assign the classwork that was scheduled to be done during that week and you were expected to learn it while not in school.
In the 60s/70s, my parents regularly took me out of grade school for family vacations but it was a private school and I was a very good student. I would guess that public schools were less amenable to bending the rules in general but I don't have direct experience.
This is what I'll be doing. I'm fortunate enough to homeschool for the time being, and that's my number one goal now, ensuring enough financial stability that we can continue to do so.
This is another symptom of how American society is falling apart and turning into a low-trust society with no real sense of community.
Of course, for you personally, it's probably the right decision, despite the problems it causes with childrens' socialization, because of the huge problems in American public schools these days, but for a society, it's terrible. In a high-trust society, people send their kids to public school (which is free) for a high-quality education, and don't worry about things like school shootings.
I was about to say, "school districts don't like that." But I'm not sure they can do much, really, if you dot your i's and cross your t's with advance notice, handling homework/missed class, and it's once a year at most.
Ask around. It's not worth foregoing thousands of dollars potentially because you want to avoid a conflict that resides largely in your head.
All school districts will try to dissuade you from taking your kids out of school. It's like asking your doctor if you should eat a cheeseburger instead of a salad. He's not actually going to say no, but he's not going to say yes either.
Most States have an specific number of days that you must attend to advance to the next grade. You may have to factor in whether they count sick days, religious holidays, or other allowed days off (e.g. take your daughter to work day). As long as you're under that cap they won't do anything.
If you are under that cap, they probably won't do anything anyway.
And if missing a few days of school is the tipping point in whether your little Jimmy or Julie has a decent education, you've got much bigger problems.
I really, really hate comments like this. It gives an excuse for pure greed and you basically throw your arms up and say "well, it's supply and demand that's just how it works!"
There are only so many flights that can fit so many people, right? So.. instead of keeping the prices reasonable (i.e., basically the same price as other times +/- a few weeks out).. they jack up the prices because they know people want/need to fly then. So they sell out their flights at the price of their choosing- and only people who can afford (or are desperate to go over their budget) get to take flights.
'Supply and demand' isn't some mathematical law of nature that must be obeyed.. it is literally based on greed and charging as much as you can for something. If everyone had similar wealth amounts, then perhaps one can argue that's "fair enough" because it inconveniences people to a similar degree. But since we have such vast wealth inequality, "supply and demand" screws 90% of the population yet again.
In your hypothetical model where the prices stay flat during peak times, who gets to fly?
Say you have 10x more demand than capacity for that one week. Do we pick at random? First to book? The techie who builds an automated platform to snipe the tickets?
I’d argue that insisting on the low demand price during periods of high demand is pure greed on the part of the consumer. It’s like demanding a ribeye for the price of dog food grade ground scraps.
You also have the child care problem - school, in addition to its educational function, is free child care. I'd like to get as much of that as I can, because I have a limited number of vacation days.
I would take that to mean just about any last minute urgent need ticket. Airlines used to offer discounts for actual (as opposed to business) emergencies but I think that's mostly gone by the wayside.
The prices during German school holiday suddenly increase to absurd levels. Flights get 2-3x more expensive, rental cars and accommodation at least two times more. Workarounds are to go to some awkward countries or just pick less popular places to get there by car.
You could also think about this in other way. The school holidays and public holidays are the normal price. And you get discount for traveling at other times.
This has always astounded me. How can somebody have such an unimportant job that their child's school holidays set the schedule? Like - you are a grown man or woman - how can junior "learning" some nonsense in class be more important than what you are doing with your life? Who are these people?
I guess using a VPN to spoof your location to another country is also an excellent way to spend your afternoon on the phone to your bank getting your card unlocked as well..
Wonder if they've bled the YouTube influencer well dry, where every one of them just loves that NordVPN lets them circumvent geo-blocks on streaming services while they travel.
For as dumb as geo-restricted content is, there's a certain irony to the fact that the new form of TV is sponsored by talking heads telling you how to get around content restrictions of other forms of TV, and shilling for that is part of what it means to make it big.
And the kicker is, as other commenters here have pointed out, it now also depends on the card you're using to pay with, straight up pulling a bait and switch after you try to pay: they don't go through with the charge if they see you're using an American card and then ask for more money.
And they didn't even have to put it in the content or the chumboxes. Personally, I setup a micro VPN box of my own on AWS in other countries. I'm wondering though if they alter the price depending on the currency or on credit card details.
Indeed. Since when is NordVPN a "cybersecurity company"?
> The research was undertaken by cybersecurity company NordVPN which manipulated the location of their computers on their browsers using a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
American tourists seem to just be fine paying more. I've spoken to some street vendors about this. They say they start redicilusly high because some Americans pay it.
At the peril of sounding like a classist rich asshole (not from America) it actually is like that though.
If you go to a shop without marked prices in some country, you can either compare to an equivalent item at home, or to something from a different country that's not up to the prices at home, and still easily be off by 1 or 2 orders of magnitude. And that's even without the "I don't even want to haggle for that amount".
But let's say that mug would cost you 5$ in the gift shop in the neighboring city what is it worth to you in the vacation place? Either you don't care, hand them 5$ and think: maybe that will 4$ I overpaid will help you more than my next coffee at home, or you think: I've seen this exact mug at the seemingly more honest shop next door for 1$ - so you'll think that is a fair price? And then you might notice that they would sell it for 20ct to a local, apparently still making some sort of profit. In which scenario does the "ridiculously high" price start? Bonus points if you had already purchased a mug for 10$ in the same country, but in the capital city.
My personal opinion for that would be that I'd prefer to give 1$ over haggling down to the local 20ct, which can still be a ridiculous 500% - but it simply won't hurt me. Of course I can stomach the 5$, but it already seems like a bit of a ripoff.
I was just in Vietnam. Anytime a vendor tried this I just walked in most instances.. I was with a group that were from Vietnam, so it was easier to spot. And haggling is part of their culture in markets. I am fine to haggle, and heck even realize that as a certain point, happy to contribute to someones betterment if it cost me an extra 20k dong (aka less than 1$).
But there were definitely parts of the country where, based on how you looked, the starting price would be x and if you looked different it would be y. If i felt i was being taken for a ride, i would just walk. I even had a street vendor see i went to the next person selling the same thing but was less on the take and bought from them. This guy started following me and basically harrassing me. I had to actually raise my voice to get him to walk away.
That said, as a result my favorite parts of the trip were in my buddies hometowns where tourists werent common and thus, I was treated as a local, or at least a curiosity (I definately got looks at some restaurants as they were shocked i would eat the same things everyone else did without hesitation). In a few cases some asked to take picture but it was always warm welcome.
In certain parts I felt preyed upon and if you made eye contact it was like you were "hooked". I am much more likely to walk away from those encounters. That said, i dont like tourist traps in general, even in my hometown stateside.
We even tested this theory in some places where my buddy would go first and place his order. Then I would get the exact same thing and when we sat compare the cost. It was interesting to say the least.
Also what we noticed was that in his hometown, this never occurred. We paid the same anytime we tried this, even in the markets. It was to a point that by the end of the trip i was going out on my own and just getting what I wanted and most cases if my basic understanding of Vietnamese wasnt sufficient i was even comfortable fanning out some bills and having them pull what they needed.
I imagine this has to do with how little haggling is accepted in US culture. What the sticker says is what you pay unless you're at some sort of establishment like a flea market. We don't try to haggle because that's not our culture or expectation.
In Mexico, there's a hotel scam. You can book one room only to be told it was "sold out" or "unavailable". There is a quiet "discussion" room to haggle to make other arrangements. You can be Mexican from "real" Mexico and it will still happen even if you "confirm" the room (which is meaningless) because it's a money-maker by holding your vacation hostage by testing your patience and enjoyment through brinkmanship. It's a classic bait-and-switch.
"Google Flights product manager James Byers recently told The Washington Post that browsing history and private searches do not impact fares.
He said prices just naturally change 'second by second' and any changes customers see when booking as normal before changing to incognito is merely a coincidence."
I never trust anyone whose primary persuasive argument boils down to "trust me".
While I do agree there is predatory pricing that takes advantage of IP geographic information, and that USA pays more on average because of USD - the whole article is a marketing mouthpiece for nordvpn.
When my wife and I went to Egypt ~20 years ago and would be shopping for anything, we decided to test this exact thing out. We'd pick a trinket common to any vendor, like a souvenir pyramid, or a ceramic bowl. We'd pretend to not know each other, and my wife would ask the price in English, and I would ask for price in Russian. Russian price was typically 1/3 that of English. And that's the starting price, to be bargained down.
After the test, all of our souvenir shopping was conducted in Russian.