Show HN: Nowcation - find spontaneous travel deals • Hacker News Board

The main difference between Nowcation and Expedia is that Nowcation helps you find your destination. With Expedia, Orbitz, and other travel sites, you have to know where you want to go before finding deals.

Re: Show HN: Nowcation - find spontaneous travel deals

#15

Post by dpcx » Sun, Feb 03, 2013, 2:49 PM UTC

It would be nice if the departure locations were alphabetical, or at least let me type in to search.

Re: Show HN: Nowcation - find spontaneous travel deals

#16

Post by gailees » Sun, Feb 03, 2013, 2:49 PM UTC

jtdaugh wrote: post #2

Isnt this just a prettier version of expedia or any of those travel sites.

I mean....on expedia, I have to query destinations individually as if I know where I'm going....this just shows me the options from my departures point of view...I love it!

Re: Show HN: Nowcation - find spontaneous travel deals

#17

Post by merlish » Sun, Feb 03, 2013, 2:50 PM UTC

This really is a cool idea. Who doesn't occasionally yearn to get away from it all?

I'm not in the US, though that's not your fault.

Re: Show HN: Nowcation - find spontaneous travel deals

#18

Post by templaedhel » Sun, Feb 03, 2013, 2:56 PM UTC

This is awesome! I've been tossing this kind of idea around for awhile, because every once and awhile I find myself browsing hipmunk for "cheap flights today" to see if there's anything interesting, and a UI with the express purpose of selling short notice cheap flights has a lot of potential.

My thoughts:

- When I'm booking a vacation, especially on short notice I'm going to need lodging. A lot of the price is hidden in the lodging and so I can't be sure if these are good deals or not. Going forward, it might be possible to load lodging in (possibly bake the deals a few times a day to reduce server load) and display 1 singular price that includes everything.

- While you're at it, why not keep playing up this instant vacation thing, take it to the next level. I click the button, pay, and you dispatch a uber to my house to take me to the airport.

- Selling package deals allows you to skim a little off the top in the way of "booking fees", but more interesting is the possibly to use yield management to buy tickets when they are the cheapest, then resell as a "nowcation" later.

Hope you keep working on this.

Re: Show HN: Nowcation - find spontaneous travel deals

#19

Post by jaddison » Sun, Feb 03, 2013, 2:58 PM UTC

Not sure how you're doing your 'booking' to photo matching, but you've got a great pic of Toronto, Ontario matched with a booking to Ontario, California. I noticed this after switching to the Seattle section.

Nice simple presentation.

Re: Show HN: Nowcation - find spontaneous travel deals

#20

Post by rjvir » Sun, Feb 03, 2013, 2:59 PM UTC

templaedhel wrote: post #18

This is awesome! I've been tossing this kind of idea around for awhile, because every once and awhile I find myself browsing hipmunk for "cheap flights today" to see if there's anything interesting, and a UI with the express purpose of selling short notice cheap flights has a lot of potential. My thoughts: - When I'm booking a vacation, especially on short notice I'm going to need lodging. A lot of the price is hidde…

These are all awesome suggestions. If a service did this for me, I would love it forever. I will definitely look into the quickest ways to implement stuff like this.