Why we built flash deals on flights and event tickets

The spontaneous traveller doesn't plan six months ahead

When we started MRVL Technologies, I'd spent years watching flight and event booking apps. They're all built the same way: plan ahead, set preferences, get recommendations. Fine if you're a planner. Useless if you're not.

What I noticed was a gap. There are millions of people aged 18 to 40 who don't book travel or events until something triggers them. A mate says 'fancy a weekend in Berlin?' A band announces a pop-up show. An airline drops unsold inventory 72 hours before departure because they need to fill seats.

Those moments are chaos. You've got maybe a few hours to decide and move. Most booking apps assume you've got weeks to browse. They're built for comparison shopping, not impulse. That's where the frustration sits. Not in the price itself, but in the friction between 'this sounds brilliant' and 'right, let me actually book it'.

Flights and events are the closest thing to real scarcity

We could have built flash deals on anything. Hotel rooms. Restaurant reservations. Concert merchandise. But flights and event tickets have something genuine going for them: they actually run out. A concert has a real finite capacity. An airline seat sells or it doesn't. The scarcity isn't artificial.

That matters because flash deals that aren't rooted in real scarcity feel like marketing theatre. You know the drill: 'Limited time offer' on something that's always available. People see through it. With flights and events, when a deal appears, it's because something real just happened. A promoter dropped last-minute inventory. An airline had cancellations and needs to recover revenue. It's not hype. It's actual supply meeting opportunity.

We focused on the UK market first because flights in and out of the UK are particularly dynamic, and the events scene here from comedy to sport to music is dense and seasonal. That's where the deals actually surface.

The three step checkout was born from watching people bail

Early on, we tracked where users dropped off during booking. The answer was embarrassing: our checkout. It had six screens. Six. By the time someone reached payment, the moment had passed. They'd second-guessed themselves or realised they didn't have their passport details at hand.

So we rebuilt it from scratch. Three steps now: confirm what you're booking, add your details, pay. That's it. No unnecessary fields. No asking you to create an account before you've even committed to buying. The faster you can move from 'yeah, I want this' to 'it's booked', the more flash deals actually work.

One user told us after booking a Glastonbury day ticket: 'I would have talked myself out of it if I had to fill in forms.' That's the whole insight right there.

Alerts and saved searches are the quiet part

The flashy bit of FlashSeat is obvious: you see a deal, you book it. But the real work happens before that. Most people don't sit on our app waiting for something to appear. That would be mad.

Instead, you save a search. 'Flights to Barcelona between now and next month.' 'Comedy gigs in London this quarter.' Then we send you an alert when something matches at a price worth the interruption. It's not email spam. It's your saved search lighting up because the conditions you actually cared about just became real.

And if you're a Premium or Pro member, you get early access. You see the deal before everyone else. That's how we've structured it: free users get the same deals as everyone, but they're seeing them at the same time as thousands of other people. Premium and Pro members get a window to book before the crowd arrives.

Why the fee structure matters more than the price itself

Here's something I learned early: the buyer fee is what kills the impulse. You've found a flight for £89. Then you see the booking fee. Suddenly it's £97 to £98. That extra 10% is the difference between 'right, let's go' and 'actually, I'll think about it'.

Free users on FlashSeat see an 8 to 10% buyer fee. That's standard. But if you're serious about flash deals, you probably want Premium, which cuts it to 4 to 5%. Or Pro, where the buyer fee disappears entirely. The maths changes when the fee changes. A £150 flight becomes £150, not £165. That matters when you're deciding in real time.

Members-only deals and early access are bonuses. But the fee is the thing that actually lets you move quickly without the sting.

The ticket lives in your phone, offline

One more thing we had to get right: once you've booked an event ticket, you've got to be able to use it. Your phone dies, the wifi drops, you're at the venue in a basement. We built the QR ticket to display at max brightness and work offline. Not because it's clever. Because it's the only way to finish the user's journey properly.

You see an alert. You book in three steps. You have the ticket in your pocket. Done. That's the experience we built for.