Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can go ahead and answer yes to all of those for any US airline and probably many non US airline, except maybe Singapore and the other top tier ones. But I assume that won’t be for long either.
It's sadly true for most. I have noticed that Southwest is a notable outlier in all this - they don't do any of that stuff. They also don't seem to register their flights on most of the search sites. It's like they know that those customers choose based on raw price alone, no room to sell any other differences. I make it a point to search their company site first before trying any other flight search.
Hipmunk Says Goodbye
211–220 of 347 posts
Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye
#212Off-topic: I have been a long-time Kayak user, but don't see many people mention it hear when discussing Hipmunk. Does anyone feel strongly that one of the competitors is better than Kayak? If so, could you elaborate? I have occasionally used Google Flights, but it seemed to have fewer knobs and I could not find any features that made me want to stay. The only competitors I have consistently but rarely used is Skipla…
A big part of what made Kayak good was that it was (is?) a solid data product - basically a gigantic farm of scrapers and crawlers glommed together with direct-from-provider (airline, hotel etc) data ingestion pipelines and coherence protocols that flowed into massive unified local cache databases. All this to ensure that you, as a customer, saw the most up to date and widest variety of information possible.
When Kayak IPO'd, it was around the time that ITA software (massive airline data provider you've never heard of) got sold to google, and there was a lot of hand wringing over whether this'd spell the end for Kayak. But even then it looks like ITA supplied only 42% of flight data (check out the S1 filing https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1312928/000119312510...), the rest from other data providers (Amadeus etc), online travel agencies, or individual airlines.
So given that, Hipmunk's focus on "we're gonna make the UX so much better" was admirable (especially given the state of a lot of the competition), and it pushed everyone to do better in that regard, but always felt a bit naive as a business strategy to me, since I think most people will pick the site with the slightly worse UI and better / cheaper / non-stale flights rather than the other way round. Especially in a non-premium race to the bottom industry like online tickets. And getting quality data takes a big team and lots of money and infrastructure, as well as lots of business relationships.
But I always thought they were a cut above a lot of the other competitors which were bad UIs mangled with dozens of ads thrown together in a slapshod way on top of the same 1-2 data providers.
Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye
#213I had the weirdest experience at the airport yesterday, LAX. I went to the the United ticket counter to buy a ticket for lax to nyc, same day. They told me I was better off buying online. In fact they looked completely unprepared to book a ticket. I couldn’t believe it. I checked other counters and sure enough, I was at the right place. So I tried using Hipmunk yesterday. It felt tired to me for some reason. I ended…
That's an extremely niche transaction and when I'm waiting to check my bag I'm glad I don't have to wait for someone who can't use the website to try and book a trip. I can't believe you waited and were told to go to the website and decided to wait again just to make sure. What's wrong with united.com? If it's through my usual airline I just book through the site or app, it takes a few seconds as they already have al…
I look at google flights, see the upcoming flights, don’t book because I don’t know how long it will take to get to the airport.
Driving to the airport, I call Delta, almost book their flight until they casually mention it’s delayed 8 hours.
Call United, it’s a 30 minute wait to book a ticket.
I put my Tesla in auto steer and pull out the app. Fucking thing keeps reminding me to touch the steering wheel. Eventually the Tesla revokes my auto steer privileges for the rest of the drive. Thanks. A. Lot.
I scream into the airport, while talking to Amex travel. There’s an united flight boarding in 20 minutes. Amex tells me that due to the inherent delay in the online ticketing process, to buy my ticket at the airport.
And that’s why you might have someone who couldn’t use the website to book a trip.
They say you don’t know what the guy in front of you could be dealing with. I was that guy that day.
I called Amex back and they expedited the ticketing. United never called me back after I left my number earlier for their automated call back service for the 30 minute hold time.
Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many countries do? I take it for granted traveling through Europe, but made the 'mistake' of booking a USA->Peru trip through Mexico City rather than taking a lounger journey through Miami, and had to clear customs and fill out a landing card for Mexico. Then it ended up being the same when transiting through intermediate countries in South America. I have so damn many passport stamps from just one trip, where I'…
Perhaps its small countries that do it best. Eg Hong Kong, Singapore. Well, the website needs a database of "in transit" aware countries (or airports) and option to prefer them.
Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
But a lot of larger companies have great programs for junior developers that ensure they learn a lot. In my experience and stories I've heard it seems that you can have an amazing time as a junior developer at a startup. If it's a good one. It it isn't, you'll be absolutely miserable and have no support. Similarly, you can be at a large company with a fantastic program for junior developers and learn a lot. And you c…
My experience with (2) larger companies, and confirmed from conversations with friends, is that while you tend to have more support, you are often placed on individual siloed teams where you stay for years. I think the key benefit of smaller companies is that you can work across so many different aspects of the application. Process also tends to be less burdensome so you are able to devote more of your time to the te…
Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "It’s also obviously illegal" I'm not sure it's as obvious as the author assumes. In the shopping sector, there's a concept of 'minimum advertised price' that every online store respects, which is set by manufacturers under the same carrot-stick arrangement (i.e. it's the price the manufacturer believes would drive the value of the entire market sector down if it were common, shopping aggregators aren't allowed to…
> if sale below M.A.P. drops the bottom out of a market and kills an industry, the product can disappear from common production and the consumer doesn't benefit in the long run Is there an example of this happening anywhere in recent history? I ask because it seems absurd to me that there is an industry so fragile that retailers taking a bit less profit would lead to sudden, total collapse. (And doubly absurd this mi…
Nobody can dare simply sell a game on the iOS or Google Play store for $5 or $10 anymore, because there's far more "free" ones out there. This has turned lots of people off of these storefronts. The race to the bottom is real.
Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye
#217I remember being pretty amazed by its UI back when it launched, but unfortunately has fallen off the last few years.
Flights are hard, and it's why we're staying away from flights at first for my travel startup Wanderium (wanderium.com). Instead we're focusing first on the "long tail" of travel issues: visas, vaccinations, safety, local customs, infrastructure, etc. By aggregating all of this data in a single place and presenting them in a single, personalized experience we think it can save travelers many hours per trip.
Check out our beta if you're curious: https://www.wanderium.com
Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
What alternatives exist to Hipmunk's display of flights? I've never seen a site with a similar display of flights by time, including display of the layovers, and easy ways to drag the earliest and latest start times to eliminate flights that aren't an option. > ITA Matrix still has time bars, if you loved that UI ITA Matrix doesn't seem to do anything like Hipmunk's UI. > flights are just not that profitable. In Nort…
1-2% is more of an upper bound. The numbers I've seen have been more like 10's of cents per conversion. And for whatever reasons, flight availability providers are not in the business of providing high throughput for clients, so the cost of performing those searches is probably considerably higher than you think. When I joined the travel industry I was shocked at what people considered reasonable latencies for availa…
Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye
#219Off-topic: I have been a long-time Kayak user, but don't see many people mention it hear when discussing Hipmunk. Does anyone feel strongly that one of the competitors is better than Kayak? If so, could you elaborate? I have occasionally used Google Flights, but it seemed to have fewer knobs and I could not find any features that made me want to stay. The only competitors I have consistently but rarely used is Skipla…
(disclaimer - worked at Kayak a long time ago) A big part of what made Kayak good was that it was (is?) a solid data product - basically a gigantic farm of scrapers and crawlers glommed together with direct-from-provider (airline, hotel etc) data ingestion pipelines and coherence protocols that flowed into massive unified local cache databases. All this to ensure that you, as a customer, saw the most up to date and w…