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Find the lowest airfare (and have fun doing it) [Tripeedo - YC 08]

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Re: Find the lowest airfare (and have fun doing it) [Tripeedo - YC 08]

#21
once I selected all "travel sites" & all "airlines", i got a warning "you are about to open 20 tabs" and I promptly closed the tab. I don't like the idea of opening that many tabs or the fact that I need to select individual airlines or sites. I rather get all the data in 1 page first and then filter by removing airlines/ sites.

I really like the cleartrip guys when it comes to travel/ticket booking. It's mostly India only but check out the UI & usability -- really nice. http://cleartrip.com

Re: Find the lowest airfare (and have fun doing it) [Tripeedo - YC 08]

#22
post #7

I don't like the pop ups, I want comparable data not 20 different pages, all of which I have to dig through before I get my information.

agreed-- but until airlines open up their fare data via APIs, users can only truly get all data by actually searching individual sites. even meta-search sites like Kayak don't have access to all fares, which is why results often vary between the various sites. tripeedo is a step toward making that process more simple.

What about Open Travel (http://www.opentravel.org/)? Its a format being supported by some of the major players in the travel industry: http://www.opentravel.org/Join/Members.aspx

I am working in a startup that aggregates rental car rates, similar to Tripeedo using OpenTravel. Its all XML based, and can be a PITA--but the result are a better product and a better user experience.

Re: Find the lowest airfare (and have fun doing it) [Tripeedo - YC 08]

#25
post #7

I don't like the pop ups, I want comparable data not 20 different pages, all of which I have to dig through before I get my information.

agreed-- but until airlines open up their fare data via APIs, users can only truly get all data by actually searching individual sites. even meta-search sites like Kayak don't have access to all fares, which is why results often vary between the various sites. tripeedo is a step toward making that process more simple.

Can you do it in a bunch of iframes on one long page?

Re: Find the lowest airfare (and have fun doing it) [Tripeedo - YC 08]

#26
post #19

I'd never thought someone would compete with Orbitz.

Orbitz, et. al don't actually do their own search. They outsource all the real work to ITA Software in Cambridge, MA - who actually run all the searches on a large cluster of servers running Common Lisp.

Re: Find the lowest airfare (and have fun doing it) [Tripeedo - YC 08]

#27
post #12
post #2

Hmm. I don't think the natural language input is a very good idea. It's very error prone and only works correctly if you actually know what language it supports. I tried it and it got confused. Also it didn't correctly recognize a three letter airport code that I used. To be frank I've found that Kayak has the best interface for doing this and there's no need to select which sites to search, etc. The interface here d…

On the one hand I agree: I'd rather it popped up while I typed "Frankfurt, Germany" to let me disambiguate HHN and FRA, rather than open 20 tabs that all said "do not service that airport". I didn't realize HHN was the wrong code until nothing was found, whereas other sites (eg Kayak) let me disambiguate immediate. On the other hand: not using a date picker is awesome . I've been using nl date parsing on my own sites…

ha! I just tried to find a flight from Frankfurt to Moscow and also wasn't successful because of your software insisting on 'Frankfurt/Hahn(HHN)'. Please fix this fast! I also tried 'From Frankfurt/Main' and 'From FRA' but wasn't understood:-( Apart from that, I like the 'command line approach to finding flights a lot. Suggestion: Why not open the third party travel sites (Orbitz etc.) in a Javascript-Window (instead of a new browser window).

Then I tried to report the airport issue to you by clicking on the feedback button on the right. After entering my feedback, upon clicking on 'Submit', the feedback window showed me something like 'there was a problem sending your message...' I tried again, to no avail - sadly, the feedback form didn't tell me what went wrong or what to do next, it only offered me to add a 'sad' emotion to my message. Which wasn't of much use, because the 'problem sending the message' prevented me from showing you my sadness (Ironically, the third party company that makes your feedback system has named itself 'getsatisfaction'). Well, I closed the feedback window and found another way to post my feedback: http://getsatisfaction.com/wundrbar/topics/i_didnt_want_to_p...

I only had to create an account, submit a fake email address, enter a new password (twice) make up a new username and enter a captcha. After that, I had to enter the password again (twice), because it has to be at least 6 characters long. And, of course, enter the captcha again. After that, I was allowed to post my comment!

:-)

Re: Find the lowest airfare (and have fun doing it) [Tripeedo - YC 08]

#28

If you are going to create a new site in this space it has to be at least as good as Kayak. Tripeedo fails horribly. As others have mentioned, a site that simply opens numerous windows with the results from each site is not adequate.

Tripeedo has two obvious advantages over Kayak: (1) It can help you search discount airlines like JetBlue and Southwest. (2) It will show you fairs that are exclusive to the airlines' websites. (I don't think I've ever run into a situation where the airline's website had a price significantly lower than what was on Kayak but I've heard rumblings that it happens.)

I agree with both of these thoughts, but where is tripeedo when kayak partners with all of these?

i recently went to hong kong and searched all of these engines and got discouraging prices. I did one search on Cathay Pacific's website and saved close to 40%. I'm almost positive you won't see this with domestic flights (for now.)

Re: Find the lowest airfare (and have fun doing it) [Tripeedo - YC 08]

#30
What I was really hoping to find here was a travel search site that let me find cheap fares without necessarily having firm dates in mind. To me, Tripeedo just puts the functionality of kayak in a slightly different UI, as opposed to offering a new way to interact with the data itself.
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