General search technology continues to improve, incrementally if not in major leaps forward. Keyword search has paved the way for general search based on synonyms and like concepts. Semantic search while still in its infancy offers promise, and of course social search, enabled through social networks, is likely to provide improved filtering and refinement of results.
In the more specific area of flight schedule search we have yet to see any revolutionary improvement to the user experience over the search process first developed by GDS systems and airlines over 40 years ago. Enter a set of discrete criteria: departure point, destination, proposed dates, and the system returns a sortable (or depending upon your point of view, biased) list of flight options. The internet promised to change all of this, but barring a few exceptions the end-to-end process has not changed significantly. Meta-search engines such as Kayak now search a broader range of flight data covering GDS flights and fares, private, consolidator and charter flights and fares. However, the experience remains fundamentally the same as before. And, while platform companies such as ITA Software and Farelogix offer flexible, more open platforms, they deliver much the same search results as their “legacy” GDS brethren.
Over the last couple of years a handful of internet companies have released services that show the potential for re-imagining the process of flight search: finding a flight, selecting from many variables and refining a selection to arrive at a few purchase options. These flight search pioneers are: Yapta, InsideTrip and Hipmunk. Of course, there’s another factor that we need to consider, call it the “800-pound gorilla in the room” – Google. Through its recent purchase of ITA Software the flight and fare meta-search arena is likely to become very interesting over the next 12 months and beyond. (More on Google and innovation in travel search in subsequent posts).
Yapta offers travelers guarantees and possible refunds for locking in a fare that may decrease in the future. While the flight search interface is similar to most other search services the ability to lock fares is a beneficial development for the end customer.
InsideTrip takes the flight search dialogue further than most typical meta-search engines by allowing a traveler to select from a number of “soft” options such as legroom, connect time, routing quality and gate location. The tool constracts an overall TripQuality score that gives a traveler more fine control over additional criteria that are important in flight selection, over and above city pair and date.
Hipmunk takes a similar approach to that of InsideTrip, and presents the results in a more graphically engaging Gantt-like display. This allows a traveler to visually compare many more options at once versus scrolling through page upon page of flights in a typical search results listing.
