Travel-related prediction system

A computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions for controlling a computing system to generate a classifier for predicting travel item prices, the computer-executable instructions implementing a method comprising:

• providing travel information for travel items on various observation dates;
• generating a feature vector for each travel item for each observation date based on the provided travel information;
• assigning a label to each travel item for each observation date with enough subsequent observation dates to generate a label indicating what the price direction prediction should have been for the travel item on the observation date, the label for each travel item for each observation date being derived from the provided travel information for that travel from subsequent observation dates;
• and
• training a classifier to make price predictions for travel items using the feature vectors and their labels as training data.

A computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions for controlling a computing system to make price-related predictions for airline trips, the computer-executable instructions comprising:

• a component that provides flight information for airline flights for trips on various observation dates, a trip having one or more available flights;
• a component that generates trip information for a trip by aggregating the flight information for the airline flights associated with the trip, the trip information being represented as feature vectors;
• a component that assigns a label to each trip for each observation date with enough subsequent observation dates to generate a label indicating what the price-related prediction should have been for the trip on the observation date, the label for each trip for each observation date being derived from the provided flight information for that trip from subsequent observation dates;
• a component that trains a classifier to make price-related predictions for trips using the feature vectors and their labels as training data;
• and
• a component that generates a price-related prediction for a trip using a feature vector for the trip and the trained classifier.

A computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions for controlling a computing system to make price-related predictions for airline tickets for trips, by a method comprising:

• providing airline flight information for trips on various observation dates;
• generating trip information for a trip by aggregating the flight information for airline flights associated with the trip;
• and
• generating a price-related prediction for a trip based on analysis of the generated trip information with enough subsequent observation dates to indicate what the price-related prediction should have been on that observation date.