Kayak introduced a new map-based tool which enable users to search for flights, hotels and activities based on various parameters they establish.
Kayak Chief Marketing Officer Robert Birge says Kayak Explore has been operational for awhile and a link to it from more Kayak travel tools was established about a month ago.
Here’s what a Kayak Explore interactive map looks like with a search set up for flights from New York for $1,050 or less to beach destinations in Summer 2010.
If you select $800 flights to Greece, you can drill down, establish the dates for the trip and conduct a traditional Kayak search for flights.
Similarly, you can set up the range of prices you want to pay for a room, along with a star rating, and view icons for hotels that fit the bill in various parts of Greece.
The hotel map looks like this.
Exploring even further, you can select the Athens Atrium Hotel, and conduct a traditional Kayak hotel search for Athens hotels, and check a box to ensure that the rates for the Athens Atrium Hotel appear on the top of the search results for comparison purposes. You also can check out reviews of the hotels from TravelPost, igoUgo and others.
Gadling appears to have broken the news about Kayak Explore this morning.
Birge says Kayak Explore is geared for users who are looking for a little inspiration about their travel plans. Perhaps they know their budget, but aren’t sure where they want to vacation.
“This is really for folks want to explore and look for inspiration for where they’d like to go,” Birge says.
Kayak had already implemented hotel search from maps, and Kayak Explore supplements that effort.
Travelers who already know they want to travel to Bermuda in August might want to use traditional Kayak search instead, Birge says.
Look for Kayak Explore to debut within Kayak’s iPad app soon, Birge says.
He adds that it “really looks cool” and “is kind of made for the iPad.”
Interestingly everyone is going somewhat gaga for the map based search. This is not that new. Different mechanisms for search have been used by different players for some time. For example the calendar search in Skyscanner is a neat application. Mapping and search was first trialed by PARS with its IRIS and PARS Manager products way back in 1988. I am sure others can think of many other examples. Air Treks built a pretty neat GUI based on Maps for RTW routings. The benefit of Google Maps and mashups has of course made the whole thing a lot easier.
I believe we are going to see a raft of these sorts of tools emerging onto the market. And so it should be. The end of explicit search and a more natural search model is coming none too soon.
Cheers
For a slightly different viewpoint, checkout what my company has done for auto rental using maps-:
http://www.forum.nokia.com/Ovi/Featured_Applications/Car_Trawler.xhtml
CarTrawler “Making Car Rental Sexy”