Hitlist, a Smart Flight Finder That Saves You Money by Telling You When To Fly
techcrunch.com
'Hitlist, meanwhile, hasn’t so much invented the concept rather than re-imagined it for the mobile age, with “lean-back” search in mind.'
techcrunch.com
I was interested, though, so I downloaded the app. The only option is to use Facebook to login. They say they've done this in order to cut down on the time it takes to launch the site, and will add an alternative later. Unfortunately that's not good enough for me, and I won't be using Facebook to login.
It seems really odd to lock the app behind a login anyway. Why not open it up and ALLOW (not force) people to log in? If you're trying to attract customers, let them use it! Don't require them to download an app and create a login before they even know if it's worth it.
Zillow does this well. You can use the search and see the value of the site right away, but you don't have to log in unless you want to start favoriting homes and saving searches. These features are useful and it makes sense to me. This just seems like poor planning for launch.
Disclaimer: I've done work in the past with one of the founders on a former iteration of this product.
2. I don't think you need to restrict yourself in order to constrain yourselves as long as you consider features in a "will this work well on mobile" mindset.
3. I disagree that mobile is a more open playing field. What exactly is your barrier with a browser on my computer vs. a browser on my smaller (phone) computer? Perhaps I misunderstand, but this doesn't make any sense to me.
Glad to hear you'll be adding a web component. As I mentioned elsewhere, I'd also suggest you allow users to try the thing before requiring them to download and login - especially with Facebook, but even without. Service sites like Zillow generally do this well.
Do yourself a favor and run a contest. Even better, spend some time trying to find the lowest price you can, then pay the $40+ to watch a few experts demolish your travel-planning skills.
Often times they'll find miles hacking / loopholes / etc. that only a human could put together. The various experts behind that site are ridiculously good at getting you deals. The more complex and "open" your trip, the more space they have to save you money.
from the app: "Q: Why is Facebook required?" "A: We haven't had time to build an alternative yet"
It's not just about not bothering with user registration and passwords, it's about using the data from FB to give users added value.
We are in the early stages of building a completely non-social experience, including possibly a fully-logged out mode, which will use even more signals to suggest destinations. We don't have an ETA to announce for this as of yet.
-Luka (Hitlist)
(Also, you probably should take New Haven Tweed airport out of the list when it's finding closest airports. Because that airport is no one's homebase, given it only flies to Philadelphia.)
We're still working on upping our coverage of all routes at all times, but for now you'll only see something from NYC to Spain/Portugal if we find something really out of the ordinary - for us, usually means 8 cents per mile or less. For now, I'd recommend using Skyscanner.com and searching for flights from NYC to Spain or NYC to Portugal. Also, I'm jealous, I wish I were going to Spain/Portugal with you.
Maybe if they integrate Rome2Rio's API,they can offer more options since you can combine airfare + local transit costs to even more destinations.
Source: I was part of the Farecast team.
http://matrix.itasoftware.com/
It will let you do searches like "flights between <date> and a month later, staying <n> to <m> nights"
You can also put in travel agent routing codes, which let you do stuff like "flights on American Airlines, connecting through Atlanta" or "not connecting though Chicago". Very handy.
Of course a full end-to-end search that took into account all travel modalities and included all the low-cost carriers would be even better, but that seems like a more difficult information-aggregation problem.
And then even further after that people would continue to only buy tickets at the swapped low prices and at the end of the line prices would all even out at all times.
-Luka (Hitlist)
The net result, if enough people used it (and loads of people didn't have business flights where they were completely indifferent about price so long as the timings worked) would be more rational and even pricing across the board. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
This isn't new by any stretch, the old as dirt http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/ will tell you the cheapest days in the coming months for flights.
"Sorry, we don't feature fares for that departure city, but we've got tons of other fares! Try another search."
I'm in the biggest city of the american continent.
-Luka (Hitlist)
If I was building a "flexible destination" app I'd be particularly keen to offer hotel bundles too, since they're higher margin and well suited to people lazily looking for the cheapest vacation meeting basic criteria within a broad time frame.