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Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

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Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#91

Post by lacker »

oh_sigh wrote: post #80
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insider trading sends important price signals to the market. The alternative is LESS information.

That's completely idiotic, and I hope you feel ashamed of what you wrote. The problem isn't more or less information, it's that insider trading creates two classes of people: Those select few "in the know" who can reap massive profits by getting an illegal phone call, and the suckers.

This ad hominem comment is inappropriate. It is certainly not "completely idiotic". There is a lot of intelligent discussion on the issue in some places. For example: http://www.fff.org/comment/com0306f.asp .

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#92

Post by casca »

spez wrote: post #76
casca wrote: post #55

Kayak and Hipmunk get a lot of praise for their UI but if you want to use a hacker interface for finding flights, http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ is the way to go. It's not as pretty, but is incredibly feature-rich, not limited to the US and regularly finds me prices that are significantly cheaper than anyone else.

FYI - you can access most of ITA's routing language on Hipmunk, if you type :: after an airport code. The advantage of using us is we can make you a booking link to actually purchase the itinerary.

Thanks, that's interesting. The issue for me is that Hipmunk only serves the US market and won't let me enter multiple airports as source or destination. My best results have started with a list of 20 possible sources and destinations which is unfeasible to search with any other publicly available service.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#93

Post by photorized »

muratmutlu wrote: post #88
photorized wrote: post #17

I don't like any of the existing travel sites, so even had to write one for friends and family (we like pick a random place and just go): http://www.somewherenice.net/ This was put together over several weekends, so don't be too harsh on me. :)

This is great, what's your traffic like? Where did you get your data from?

Thank you, I just "launched" the site a couple of days ago, so nobody knows about it except my FB friends. Airport data is open-source, although it needed some cleaning (to filter out things like railroad stations etc), weather forecasts are from Wunderground, but the main asset is Destinations. They've been hand-picked (a la Mechanical Turk), although the list is growing. Mainly focusing on ski destinations now, so the starting data set is places that I find interesting for whatever reason. I am experimenting with a couple of other data feeds, trying to gauge their relevance. The list of recommendations you are shown is not random, more interesting places (with better conditions at the time) bubble up.

Traditional travel sites are airport-centric. Say you want to Ski in Alta UT. Most would try to send you to SLC (Salt Lake City), show you weather for Salt Lake City, then try to up-sell you on a hotel in Salt Lake City (or maybe Sandy UT).

Mine's is destination centric. Where you fly to, where you check the weather, where you ski, and where you book your hotel (or even buy lift tickets from) - are not necessarily the same "place". Does this clarify things somewhat?

P.S. Just checked real-time Google Analytics, you guys (HN are awesome, stress testing the site :). Do you think I should do a "show HN" at some point?

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#94

Post by photorized »

calbear81 wrote: post #84
photorized wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no it doesn't, not for me or anyone I know at least. I can elaborate.

Ahh, I see that it didn't draw the lines but it handles the budget constraints while dynamically updating the map.

Main problem, in my opinion, is that most solutions are airport-centric. Say you want to Ski in Alta UT. You can't typically book travel from NYC to Alta, you have to specify "from" JFK/LGA (or NYC) to "SLC", assuming you know exactly where you are going, what the best airport is to fly to etc.

Some let you select "ski" destinations (as Kayak Explore does), so it may send you to SLC (Salt Lake City), show you weather for Salt Lake City, then try to up-sell you on a hotel in Salt Lake City (or maybe Sandy UT).

Mine's is destination centric. Where you fly to, where you check the weather, where you ski, and where you book your hotel (or even buy lift tickets from) are not necessarily the same "place". Make sense?

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#95

Post by muratmutlu »

photorized wrote: post #93
muratmutlu wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great, what's your traffic like? Where did you get your data from?

Thank you, I just "launched" the site a couple of days ago, so nobody knows about it except my FB friends. Airport data is open-source, although it needed some cleaning (to filter out things like railroad stations etc), weather forecasts are from Wunderground, but the main asset is Destinations. They've been hand-picked (a la Mechanical Turk), although the list is growing. Mainly focusing on ski destinations now, so…

I love that you're using Mechanical Turk. Thanks for the explanation and congratulations on launching!

I would love to have my own flight search engine, I think there's still loads of room for improvement even with Kayak (a billion dollar + comapany), Hipmunk, Skyscanner out there

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#96

Post by edouard1234567 »

brianbreslin wrote: post #71
scotth wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried out Google Flights? I've been told it's based on this same technology, and has a much better UI. And be sure to click around. It has some interesting tools, like prices for flights to your destination flown out of nearby airports.

wow google flights is super fast!

My guess is that they predict the most common searches and constantly query and cash results for these searches, something I don't think Kayak or hipmunk does. I don't think you can launch a search product on google if it takes more than .xx seconds to return the result...

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#97

Post by goldfish »

casca wrote: post #92
spez wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI - you can access most of ITA's routing language on Hipmunk, if you type :: after an airport code. The advantage of using us is we can make you a booking link to actually purchase the itinerary.

Thanks, that's interesting. The issue for me is that Hipmunk only serves the US market and won't let me enter multiple airports as source or destination. My best results have started with a list of 20 possible sources and destinations which is unfeasible to search with any other publicly available service.

You can enter multiple airports (as long as they're in the same time zone). Just separate them with commas.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#98

Post by photorized »

muratmutlu wrote: post #95
photorized wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, I just "launched" the site a couple of days ago, so nobody knows about it except my FB friends. Airport data is open-source, although it needed some cleaning (to filter out things like railroad stations etc), weather forecasts are from Wunderground, but the main asset is Destinations. They've been hand-picked (a la Mechanical Turk), although the list is growing. Mainly focusing on ski destinations now, so…

I love that you're using Mechanical Turk. Thanks for the explanation and congratulations on launching! I would love to have my own flight search engine, I think there's still loads of room for improvement even with Kayak (a billion dollar + comapany), Hipmunk, Skyscanner out there

Thank you.

I found a few areas that none of the existing travel solutions seem to have addressed, v2 and 3 will be more interesting. :)

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#99

Post by photorized »

jngreenlee wrote: post #33
photorized wrote: post #17

I don't like any of the existing travel sites, so even had to write one for friends and family (we like pick a random place and just go): http://www.somewherenice.net/ This was put together over several weekends, so don't be too harsh on me. :)

I like it, I've been looking for something like this. Some features (dreaded feature creep!) I'd love: 1. Map interface with little lines from my home base airport to the possible destinations - It's just fun to see. 2. Sliders to increase/decrease budget - Dynamically adding/removing routes as I change the $$ limit. Maybe these would only take another weekend to add?

I am hesitant about including budgets, mainly because they can be so misleading, and it's hard to actually get that price once you start booking. I had included "staring from $xxx RT", but then commented it out just prior to launch.

But you just gave me another idea.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#100

Post by philfreo »

bduerst wrote: post #48
antoko wrote: post #10

Kayak is great (was?) but Hipmunk is more than up to the task of filling the void if Priceline ruin Kayak. Congrats to the Kayak folks I guess, when they got into the industry they really raised the bar. Before Kayak I remember having to use Expedia and Orbitz and just having to accept their crappy UI because there simply were no alternatives.

Hipmunk has a much better interface, and considering it's also an aggregator, much better at helping me quickly find flights or hotels.

disagree. kayak provides filters in exactly the way that makes sense to me. i've tried hipmunk and google and always come back to kayak.
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