5 ms·

OMG, I've been waiting for someone to build something like this forever. I've always hated the fact that all major travel sites work based on the assumption th

OMG, I've been waiting for someone to build something like this forever. I've always hated the fact that all major travel sites work based on the assumption that you already know exactly when and where you're going, rather than at least giving you the option to explore your options.

qeorge 16y ago
Me too! www.voyij.com is the closest I've seen. Really glad one of the bigger sites started doing this too.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
noodle 16y ago
so, i built something almost exactly like this for myself to use, except it doesn't display itself on a google map. instead, it cross-references itself with a database of people. i use it when i'm hiring sports officials, to find the ones that would be the cheapest to fly in. never really considered how useful it would be for others. i feel dumb as hell, looking at this and seeing what i could've done :*-(
- _pius 16y ago
  don't feel dumb, just put it up, add user accounts/Facebook, and make it a group travel planning tool. I could've used something like that while helping plan a bachelor's party.
  - noodle 16y ago
    i probably will, but it just kind of takes the wind out of the sails to know you're half copying something. that spark of "i'm doing something neat" isn't quite there.
    - aaronblohowiak 16y ago
      i dont know.. this is interesting for me, but it would be profoundly more useful with my (admittedly small) group of friends.
      - noodle 16y ago
        why more useful for your friends?
        zhyder 16y ago
        I think he means it would be useful when used for a geographically distributed group. You could find the cheapest place for a reunion based on total cost of airfares, and split the cost evenly.
        iag 16y ago
        noodle, this is a great idea, don't give this up just because there's another competitor in town. Please ping me if you are interested in pursuing this further. I can link you up to startup that could definitely make use of this to compliment their trip planning service. bowei [ a t ] cardmunch. c o m
        noodle 16y ago
        i suppose the issue i was trying to convey is that i wasn't giving up, i was never aware that i had something to give up on. never thought of the thing as a useful tool for me and a few others, since everyone i showed it to thought it was neat, but i was the only one who ever actually used it.
        danohuiginn 16y ago
        Sure, just so long as it doesn't tell us all to vacation in Frankfurt airport;) To put it another way: The results for this kind of query are often going to be the big travel hubs. These may not always be the kind of destination that your users want. neat idea, anyway.
madmaze 16y ago
Yea but dont rely on the data that is displayed, i just checked out 5 flights and the flights listed there were not even close to what i found on the website itself. But otherwise definitely damn cool
- borism 16y ago
  that's because they show the cheapest round-trip someone else has found previously
  - madmaze 16y ago
    hmm i didnt consider that, i was hoping that these were bookable tickets
borism 16y ago
my problem is, I know my travel dates (mid-August) and I know my budget, but still not sure where to go. Unfortunately Kayak searches (including this very cool hack) are useless at solving that. P.S. ITA Software Matrix is good at this if you have a list of places, but not for random destinations.
- bbatsell 16y ago
  What am I missing, why is this useless? You can specify your budget as the max price, and the "Thinking about" to August 2010. Granted, you can't specify "mid-August", but within a single month, usually airfares only change based on the days of the week of both segments.
  - borism 16y ago
    didn't notice "thinking about" menu. sorry, my bad!
- sjones 16y ago
  Well, here's the countries you can fly to from the US in august: http://www.skyscanner.net/flights-from/us/august-2010/august-2010/cheapest-flights-from-united-states-in-august-2010.html http://www.skyscanner.net/flights-from/us/august-2010/august...
smaher 16y ago
Another good site that does something similar is skyscanner.com For example, here are all of the flights from SFO: http://www.skyscanner.com/flights-from/sfo/cheapest-flights-from-san-francisco-international.html?rtn=1 http://www.skyscanner.com/flights-from/sfo/cheapest-flights-...
- dagw 16y ago
  Thank you. I didn't know about that site, and it's exactly the sort of thing I've been looking for. Perfect for planning my next holiday.
bkrausz 16y ago
The problem you have is that flight data is incredibly fast-changing and computationally expensive to get. So in order to get enough data for this you need to do a lot of long queries very often. Companies that provide pricing information (like ITA, who Kayak uses) charge a lot for these resources, so it's not like the usual internet where your incremental cost per user or search is minimal: there's a real cost here. The entire architecture was build on one-off "price from X to Y on this day", building a layer of generality to that is fairly difficult. Full disclosure: I used to work at TripAdvisor on flights.
- kiwidrew 16y ago
  Yep, that's exactly right. Every metasearch site out there uses essentially the same interface: given an origin, destination, departure date, and arrival date, return a list of itineraries in order of increasing price. Needless to say, the number of combinations of these variables precludes doing any kind of exhaustive search (especially since you're being charged per query). And availability is constantly changing, so your results are potentially out-of-date the instant you receive them. Given these restrictions, the only way to support such broad-ranging queries as "where can I go for less than $1000?" is to cache results from previous searches and attempt to guess at the answer. Which is why, when you start narrowing down date ranges and choosing more obscure airports, the results quickly become so sparse as to be useless.
  - jka 16y ago
    Broadly agree with this and the parent - but there's an interesting alternative way to look at travel metasearch. If you think of obtaining prices as being akin to 'indexing', then what metasearch engines are doing is building up a search index for flights. And not all price sources necessarily charge for data (do Google pay to index Hacker News?) Flight prices become stale as do indexed web pages - and as long as the user doesn't pay a transaction price for any search activity, then you can re-check pages based on user activity - in the case of travel, re-check the price once the user nears the booking phase of the funnel. As noted though, sparseness of travel queries is certainly tricky! The 80/20 rule applies to some extent, and popular routes will be the ones which have the best price cache. Another disclosure: I work for Skyscanner (our core is a flexible travel search engine)

qeorge 16y ago

Me too! www.voyij.com is the closest I've seen. Really glad one of the bigger sites started doing this too.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

noodle 16y ago

so, i built something almost exactly like this for myself to use, except it doesn't display itself on a google map. instead, it cross-references itself with a database of people. i use it when i'm hiring sports officials, to find the ones that would be the cheapest to fly in. never really considered how useful it would be for others. i feel dumb as hell, looking at this and seeing what i could've done :*-(

_pius 16y ago
don't feel dumb, just put it up, add user accounts/Facebook, and make it a group travel planning tool. I could've used something like that while helping plan a bachelor's party.
- noodle 16y ago
  i probably will, but it just kind of takes the wind out of the sails to know you're half copying something. that spark of "i'm doing something neat" isn't quite there.
  - aaronblohowiak 16y ago
    i dont know.. this is interesting for me, but it would be profoundly more useful with my (admittedly small) group of friends.
    - noodle 16y ago
      why more useful for your friends?
      - zhyder 16y ago
        I think he means it would be useful when used for a geographically distributed group. You could find the cheapest place for a reunion based on total cost of airfares, and split the cost evenly.
        iag 16y ago
        noodle, this is a great idea, don't give this up just because there's another competitor in town. Please ping me if you are interested in pursuing this further. I can link you up to startup that could definitely make use of this to compliment their trip planning service. bowei [ a t ] cardmunch. c o m
        noodle 16y ago
        i suppose the issue i was trying to convey is that i wasn't giving up, i was never aware that i had something to give up on. never thought of the thing as a useful tool for me and a few others, since everyone i showed it to thought it was neat, but i was the only one who ever actually used it.
        danohuiginn 16y ago
        Sure, just so long as it doesn't tell us all to vacation in Frankfurt airport;) To put it another way: The results for this kind of query are often going to be the big travel hubs. These may not always be the kind of destination that your users want. neat idea, anyway.

madmaze 16y ago

Yea but dont rely on the data that is displayed, i just checked out 5 flights and the flights listed there were not even close to what i found on the website itself. But otherwise definitely damn cool

borism 16y ago
that's because they show the cheapest round-trip someone else has found previously
- madmaze 16y ago
  hmm i didnt consider that, i was hoping that these were bookable tickets

borism 16y ago

my problem is, I know my travel dates (mid-August) and I know my budget, but still not sure where to go. Unfortunately Kayak searches (including this very cool hack) are useless at solving that. P.S. ITA Software Matrix is good at this if you have a list of places, but not for random destinations.

bbatsell 16y ago
What am I missing, why is this useless? You can specify your budget as the max price, and the "Thinking about" to August 2010. Granted, you can't specify "mid-August", but within a single month, usually airfares only change based on the days of the week of both segments.
- borism 16y ago
  didn't notice "thinking about" menu. sorry, my bad!
sjones 16y ago
Well, here's the countries you can fly to from the US in august: http://www.skyscanner.net/flights-from/us/august-2010/august-2010/cheapest-flights-from-united-states-in-august-2010.html http://www.skyscanner.net/flights-from/us/august-2010/august...

smaher 16y ago

Another good site that does something similar is skyscanner.com For example, here are all of the flights from SFO: http://www.skyscanner.com/flights-from/sfo/cheapest-flights-from-san-francisco-international.html?rtn=1 http://www.skyscanner.com/flights-from/sfo/cheapest-flights-...

dagw 16y ago
Thank you. I didn't know about that site, and it's exactly the sort of thing I've been looking for. Perfect for planning my next holiday.

bkrausz 16y ago

The problem you have is that flight data is incredibly fast-changing and computationally expensive to get. So in order to get enough data for this you need to do a lot of long queries very often. Companies that provide pricing information (like ITA, who Kayak uses) charge a lot for these resources, so it's not like the usual internet where your incremental cost per user or search is minimal: there's a real cost here. The entire architecture was build on one-off "price from X to Y on this day", building a layer of generality to that is fairly difficult. Full disclosure: I used to work at TripAdvisor on flights.

kiwidrew 16y ago
Yep, that's exactly right. Every metasearch site out there uses essentially the same interface: given an origin, destination, departure date, and arrival date, return a list of itineraries in order of increasing price. Needless to say, the number of combinations of these variables precludes doing any kind of exhaustive search (especially since you're being charged per query). And availability is constantly changing, so your results are potentially out-of-date the instant you receive them. Given these restrictions, the only way to support such broad-ranging queries as "where can I go for less than $1000?" is to cache results from previous searches and attempt to guess at the answer. Which is why, when you start narrowing down date ranges and choosing more obscure airports, the results quickly become so sparse as to be useless.
- jka 16y ago
  Broadly agree with this and the parent - but there's an interesting alternative way to look at travel metasearch. If you think of obtaining prices as being akin to 'indexing', then what metasearch engines are doing is building up a search index for flights. And not all price sources necessarily charge for data (do Google pay to index Hacker News?) Flight prices become stale as do indexed web pages - and as long as the user doesn't pay a transaction price for any search activity, then you can re-check pages based on user activity - in the case of travel, re-check the price once the user nears the booking phase of the funnel. As noted though, sparseness of travel queries is certainly tricky! The 80/20 rule applies to some extent, and popular routes will be the ones which have the best price cache. Another disclosure: I work for Skyscanner (our core is a flexible travel search engine)