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If I wrongly accused you, my apologies. That is what the blog post led me to believe I could do, and I was genuinely surprised that I couldn't do it. I really

If I wrongly accused you, my apologies. That is what the blog post led me to believe I could do, and I was genuinely surprised that I couldn't do it. I really don't see any queries I can do on your site that I can't do on Kayak already, except that Kayak seems to have many more sources of data and therefore fares at least as low and sometimes lower?

tomhoward 14y ago
Have a look at the scrolling search suggestions on the front of http://adioso.com http://adioso.com, then try executing the same searches on Kayak, in a single search. All of them.
- justin_vanw 14y ago
  All of them? Maybe I misunderstand what you are saying, but if you mean that the random travel searches you scroll on the site are a feature, that is bordering on insane. I don't need to go to some random place for some random duration at some random time. So, since it would be insane to consider random trips to be a useful feature, I assumed that it was recommending certain trips because they were really good deals. Maybe your system figured out I live near San Jose, and recommended me a flight because it was just such a great deal it was worth my time to try that search and maybe go on a vacation on a whim. That would actually be an awesome feature, and I would probably use it a lot! So, benefit of the doubt. So I tested that theory, and here is what I got: http://adioso.com/us/san-jose-california-to-hawaii-hawaii-next-week-for-7-days http://adioso.com/us/san-jose-california-to-hawaii-hawaii-ne... Best flight that Adioso found was $535 for that trip. BTW, Expedia never returns on your site. Then I went to Kayak. It took me about 30 seconds to fill it out, and it took me here: http://www.kayak.com/#/flights/SJC,nearby-HNL,OGG,LIH,KOA/2013-03-13-flexible/2013-03-20-flexible http://www.kayak.com/#/flights/SJC,nearby-HNL,OGG,LIH,KOA/20... So, the best fare that Kayak found was a $277 hacker fare. That's almost exactly half as much as what Adioso found. Sure, that's a hacker fare, and for a 10 day trip not 7 days. Fine, the best fare that is exactly comparable is $350 for a 7 day trip leaving next week round-trip on Delta.
  - tomhoward 14y ago
    Sigh :) I mean they're examples of searches you can do on Adioso, many/most of which take a lot of time and many repetitive searches on other sites. The Hawaii search you tried came up with the same fares as Kayak when I tried it. It may well have timed out for you, which is part of the performance challenges this post is mostly about. But it occurs to me your approach to travel doesn't make you the intended customer for this product, so I won't try to persuade you further :)
    - djcapelis 14y ago
      Who exactly is your intended customer currently? I'm honestly curious. Your site currently doesn't support things like "I'd like to leave from anywhere in CA and go to Europe sometime in August and have a really great experience and a really good deal" and you're also claiming it doesn't work for the style of the person you're responding to... so... who exactly is it that you think is the target user of Adioso? I'm not just giving you a hard time, either. I'm planning a trip soon and we've got a lot of flexibility in a lot of ways combined with some whacky constraints in others. Is Adioso right for me? I honestly can't tell. It seems like I should be able to.
      - nedwin 14y ago
        Random location (in a rough geographic area) to random location (in much larger geographic area) would be pretty crazy search. I think for most travellers it's fair to say that they know what their starting point is. Or am I making an ass of myself?
        djcapelis 14y ago
        Usually! But I know people whose idea of a geographic starting point would be a lot larger than you'd think and would just treat it as an excuse for a roadtrip. Also you could have a schedule where some days I know I'm going to be near city X and others near city Y, but I wouldn't mind beginning from either.
    - 14y ago
jfoster 14y ago
Kayak is a rigid form that doesn't fit how most people travel. Adioso is a "what would you like?" box. If I want to find a flight next week on Kayak, I have to fill in at least two text boxes, think about the dates next week, pick just one out of a calendar, and then get an error about Kayak wanting me to pick "one way" from their box at the top. In the end, I get only flights for that day and need to go through the aforementioned process over and over to see flights on different days. Kayak is the same old travel search frustrations in a slightly nicer interface. Adioso also found me a cheaper flight than Kayak did. ("sydney to melbourne next week" - Adioso gets $35, Kayak $57 for the same day)

tomhoward 14y ago

Have a look at the scrolling search suggestions on the front of http://adioso.com http://adioso.com, then try executing the same searches on Kayak, in a single search. All of them.

justin_vanw 14y ago
All of them? Maybe I misunderstand what you are saying, but if you mean that the random travel searches you scroll on the site are a feature, that is bordering on insane. I don't need to go to some random place for some random duration at some random time. So, since it would be insane to consider random trips to be a useful feature, I assumed that it was recommending certain trips because they were really good deals. Maybe your system figured out I live near San Jose, and recommended me a flight because it was just such a great deal it was worth my time to try that search and maybe go on a vacation on a whim. That would actually be an awesome feature, and I would probably use it a lot! So, benefit of the doubt. So I tested that theory, and here is what I got: http://adioso.com/us/san-jose-california-to-hawaii-hawaii-next-week-for-7-days http://adioso.com/us/san-jose-california-to-hawaii-hawaii-ne... Best flight that Adioso found was $535 for that trip. BTW, Expedia never returns on your site. Then I went to Kayak. It took me about 30 seconds to fill it out, and it took me here: http://www.kayak.com/#/flights/SJC,nearby-HNL,OGG,LIH,KOA/2013-03-13-flexible/2013-03-20-flexible http://www.kayak.com/#/flights/SJC,nearby-HNL,OGG,LIH,KOA/20... So, the best fare that Kayak found was a $277 hacker fare. That's almost exactly half as much as what Adioso found. Sure, that's a hacker fare, and for a 10 day trip not 7 days. Fine, the best fare that is exactly comparable is $350 for a 7 day trip leaving next week round-trip on Delta.
- tomhoward 14y ago
  Sigh :) I mean they're examples of searches you can do on Adioso, many/most of which take a lot of time and many repetitive searches on other sites. The Hawaii search you tried came up with the same fares as Kayak when I tried it. It may well have timed out for you, which is part of the performance challenges this post is mostly about. But it occurs to me your approach to travel doesn't make you the intended customer for this product, so I won't try to persuade you further :)
  - djcapelis 14y ago
    Who exactly is your intended customer currently? I'm honestly curious. Your site currently doesn't support things like "I'd like to leave from anywhere in CA and go to Europe sometime in August and have a really great experience and a really good deal" and you're also claiming it doesn't work for the style of the person you're responding to... so... who exactly is it that you think is the target user of Adioso? I'm not just giving you a hard time, either. I'm planning a trip soon and we've got a lot of flexibility in a lot of ways combined with some whacky constraints in others. Is Adioso right for me? I honestly can't tell. It seems like I should be able to.
    - nedwin 14y ago
      Random location (in a rough geographic area) to random location (in much larger geographic area) would be pretty crazy search. I think for most travellers it's fair to say that they know what their starting point is. Or am I making an ass of myself?
      - djcapelis 14y ago
        Usually! But I know people whose idea of a geographic starting point would be a lot larger than you'd think and would just treat it as an excuse for a roadtrip. Also you could have a schedule where some days I know I'm going to be near city X and others near city Y, but I wouldn't mind beginning from either.
  - 14y ago

jfoster 14y ago

Kayak is a rigid form that doesn't fit how most people travel. Adioso is a "what would you like?" box. If I want to find a flight next week on Kayak, I have to fill in at least two text boxes, think about the dates next week, pick just one out of a calendar, and then get an error about Kayak wanting me to pick "one way" from their box at the top. In the end, I get only flights for that day and need to go through the aforementioned process over and over to see flights on different days. Kayak is the same old travel search frustrations in a slightly nicer interface. Adioso also found me a cheaper flight than Kayak did. ("sydney to melbourne next week" - Adioso gets $35, Kayak $57 for the same day)