Hipmunk (YC S10) Brings a Little Ecstasy to Hotel Search and Booking | Hacker News Reader

Hipmunk (YC S10) Brings a Little Ecstasy to Hotel Search and Booking

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56 pointsthankuz20 comments

I wish they would focus on cleaning up their flight search before moving on to new features. While I like the idea of their flight search - in practice its a confusing visual mess. I really wanted to like it - but I found myself back on travelocity in short order. I think they're really on to something with their idea, but it needs some refinement before they move on. I showed it to my folks back home and they looked at it for about 2 minutes before just going to southwest.com and booking their flight there. While hipmunk may be all the rage here - it has basically zero traction outside of the tech community.

I agree with you about their flight search issues See my previous comments - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2249984

But this hotel search upgrade really is an improvement on the usual booking systems. I can easily add filters for the basic things I need in a room and then visualize the results based on location. Traditional booking sites give you either no grouped map or a just a small indecipherable map.

Yep, we felt that when you book an hotel you need to be able to easily compare two result sets. So that's why we made it easy to toggle amenities on and off and instantly see the result on the map.

One aspect was especially confusing last time I used it: I had a voucher to redeem on United, so I selected United on the dropdown for which airline to use. Lo and behold, all the flights were from other airlines.

Talk about easy to use!

The very non-tech people I've shown have loved it. I wonder if it's a generational thing?

The Hipmunk interface seems really divisive. I don't find it confusing at all, but I keep reading that from many people. Perhaps it has to do with one's familiarity with Gantt charts?

I love Hipmunk, but 'ecstasy' is a strange word to use in a headline about an airline travel booking site.

In all seriousness, if they put an alerts feature in, it would be amazing. I find that I have to check back really often to find the best deals because airlines rejigger the prices so much.

Have you tried TripAdvisor Flights? I work for TripAdvisor, and we have an "AirWatch" feature that will send you an email whenever the price for a certain route drops. http://www.tripadvisor.com/help/what_are_airwatch_alerts

I thought they were referencing the ability to find MDMA by searching for 'vice'. You know...they are on a 'roll'.

One of their sort options at the top of your hotel search results column is "ecstasy". I suppose that in hipmunk land, agony is to ecstasy as 0 is to 1.

The 'Ecstasy' refers to their oddly named new feature that allows to sort by 'Ecstasy', which is a combination of reviews, price, etc.

These guys are moving at mach 5 for such a small team.

More likely these guys are moving at mach 5 because of such a small team.

Maybe there's no way to get around this, but a flight from DCA to LAS on Aug 3 is $227 with Hipmunk, whereas on Spiritair.com I get as low as $195. With a promotion coupon (which almost always pop up about a month in advance) I could get between $19 and $50 off that.

Is there some way Hipmunk can show reduced costs direct from airlines or incorporate promo coupons? I know some promos are "random" but Spirit has them every week for different destinations and dates.

(I also notice Tripadvisor shows me one for $189 if I leave from BWA... does Hipmunk have a 'nearby airports' search option?)

As a frequent airbnb host, I wonder if this is going to increase bookings... It seems like a lot more people have heard of hipmunk than airbnb.

Is it weird having other people in your place? Do you ever put up your space while you're away, leaving people unsupervised?

Its not that weird having people over. Its a lot like having friends over to visit, except you haven't met them before. We've never rented the whole place out while we were away, but we give out guests a key and they are often there while we are out during the day or out to dinner, etc.

I figure that if someone wanted to steal something there are much better ways (for example ways that don't involve giving out their full name and credit card information) and we don't own anything that steal-able anyway.

The biggest problem is that we only have one bathroom and it can get busy with showers in the morning.

One nit pick I just found when doing a hotel search is the tip was still flight related... "Tip #4: Drag the black triangle to hide flights."

Been using hipmunk for a while now & love it for airline searches. People may say its confusing but I find it extremely easy to use and much less confusing then their competitors. The hotel feature is a great addition as well. The only thing I'd add to it (at least on a quick look) is an option to search/filter by pet friendly hotels.

Just used Hipmunk for the 1st time to book a ticket and found it to be totally useful and intuitive.

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