Continental is taking a page from the hotel website, offering a pseudo best-price guarantee. There’s very little behind it, but check it out anyway.

If you search for travel on Continental.com and find a lower price for the same city pair and travel dates somewhere else, they’ll send you a 10% electronic discount certificate.

Fortunately you don’t have to buy the itinerary from Continental. Just search for the fare. And a good chunk of the time Continental is not going to have the lowest fare – another airline might for any given city pair, and another website might have a lower fare for the same flights. It’s just a way to get publicity for the website, implying that they’re confident it’s the way to get the best prices.

Here’s a hint: the offer is so completely ludicrous that the prices and travel dates don’t seem to even have to be real. We’ll see once I receive my certificates, but I’d bet that any submissions, factual or not, will yield the same discount coupons.

You can earn up to 3 discounts per email address, but those discounts are of limited use – restricted on price of ticket and dates of travel.