Not every destination on Sparkfare is held to the same bar. That's not inconsistency — it's a deliberate reflection of how differently each destination's fares actually behave. Every one of our 40 destinations sits in one of four clusters, and the cluster determines both the deal threshold and, for one cluster, whether a threshold applies at all.
Destinations like Bali, Tokyo, and Cape Town swing further on their own than a short domestic hop does, simply because long-haul fares have more room to move. A smaller dip here isn't a meaningfully rare event, so it takes a real 25% drop below the route's own 30-day average to earn a deal badge — the highest bar of any cluster.
Destinations like Lisbon, Athens, and Tulum have pricing that falls off a real cliff between peak and shoulder season. A 15% dip is a genuinely meaningful signal here without needing Long-Haul Volatility's higher bar.
Destinations like Prague and Budapest, where low-cost-carrier routing quirks occasionally open real fare arbitrage. Same 15% threshold as Shoulder-Season Cliffs, for a different underlying reason.
Destinations like Marrakech and Cusco are always shown on the board whenever we have data for them, regardless of price, and never carry a "deal" badge. This is a curation choice, not a claim about savings — these are destinations worth surfacing on their own merits, and we'd rather be upfront that "featured" and "deal" mean two different things than let a Visual Clickbait destination borrow the credibility of a badge it never actually earned.
Full calculation details for the three thresholded clusters are in how we rank deals.