Semirelated question: are there any good interest groups, mailing lists, or forums for tech people working in the travel vertical? I've been doing travel-related stuff since 2004 and I still don't have any good industry contacts.
My first taste of the industry was working for WorldMedia.net, which is an advertising/media buying/creative services agency which focuses on the travel sector. While there we built Aloha Airlines' booking engine and a bunch of other cool stuff, mostly really dynamic marketing tools driven by data from different sources and stuff like that.
I now work for FederatedTravel.com, where we have a large network of semi-independent hotel booking sites.
Well, aside from being an avid traveler, I'm currently working on a side project that helps people find the cheapest method of travel (air, bus, car) to a given location. Getting more information on how consumers travel and their interaction with online travel sites are what I'm most interested in.
Booked a trip to SE Asia with you guys a few days ago. For what it's worth my first user reaction was:
* Looking good!
* Of course I jumped in without reading any help and didn't realize the full power of the natural language search, in particular "direct" would have been handy to know. I'm sure you recognize this as a potential problem.. That said, my perception is it's not that big a deal from your perspective - it didn't stop me using the site and having done 1 booking now and liked the experience I've bothered to investigate further (including reading the very easy to find help), and now feel much more qualified to drive.
* The flights cost more than indicated because they didn't include luggage. Be nice to see an all inclusive number, especially as I can't help speculating the price quoting is probably not uniform across airlines... some prices being more inclusive than others. Also, I guess it made the real price of the multi-segment route I selected closer to what a direct flight would have been, making me more likely to have wanted a direct flight.
* Would have liked to exclude a specific airline, can I do that? Consider that a lower priority feature though.
Many thanks for the comments, great to see you're liking it so far.
We certainly hope to be able to offer apples-with-apples comparisons on luggage and other charges - it's a growing problem in the industry, particularly with low-cost airlines.
One thing that's really hard to do with our current architecture is exclude an airine; we'll be able to allow you to limit to a specific airline, and we'll implement that soon, but all-except-one is for much later :)
How has the dynamic between you guys and Hipmunk been? You guys may be targeting different types of travelers but there is that shared goal of making travel better. Has there been a collaboration, or do you guys have more of a friendly rivalry going?
It's early days but so far it's been great. We know them quite well and have chatted about our ideas and helped each other out a bit. Time will tell how we each progress but hopefully we'll carry on focusing on different markets and use-cases but supporting and helping each other out where appropriate. The online travel search space is most certainly big enough for different companies solving different problems.
I tried it for a few minutes and I love it. The oh-so-refreshing interface makes it such a joy to use.
One thing: I was confused as to whether or not my searches were round trip or not. I finally realized that they were not based on (1) the low prices returned and (2) the FAQ. But I guess I should have known by the "Once you've selected one you'll be able to find a return trip..." text.
We haven't quite mastered the behaviour around round trips but we'll keep working at it. Part of it is educating people and adapting to cultural differences. Australians, Europeans and Asians are more accustomed to unbundled one-way low-cost segments than US travellers, I think.
