With more and more people turning to online travel booking systems, it has become a game of who can find the cheapest deals the quickest. With hundreds of sites all claiming to find the best price, it’s easy to see how we’ve been roped into believing that by clearing our internet history or deleting cookies we are in some way tricking those systems into finding us the lowest price.

The theory goes that when you search for flights, the systems pick up your interest in that deal. The more you look around, go away, think about it and come back, the system will raise the price in a bid to get you to book then and there.

It all comes down to the old game of supply and demand. By noting your interest, the online booking systems make those deals seem like they’re in high demand and in low supply, ushering people to nab a deal before it gets too expensive.

Time and time again the rumour has resurfaced with little to no evidence. While prices may rise upon returning to a recently viewed travel site, it is more likely to do with issues around time (time of day/week/number of days until departure) and the fact that the system genuinely has more people on the site looking at the same deal.