In Search for Perfect Hotel Results, Hipmunk is Latest to Give it a Try
Skift Take
Hipmunk's user experience in hotel search feels more convenient than on many other metasearch and booking sites but like everyone else, Hipmunk is experimenting and has plenty to learn. We have a long way to go but that's no surprise to anyone.
Does the hotel search result you view on an online travel site a perfect match, just in the ballpark or even irrelevant?
Six-year-old metasearch site Hipmunk quietly began offering desktop-site visitors the ability to enter natural language queries such as, "I want a cheap hotel on the Upper West Side" in a bid to make searching easier and to provide more relevant results.
Travelers type natural language keywords into a search field and receive corresponding results with real-time availability and rates. The update isn't immediately obvious and requires some guesswork to locate as there's no banner or text indicating users can perform such a search.
But various keyword searches we tried yielded relevant results. Hipmunk's latest update follows moves by other search and booking sites to test natural language search with travelers.
Travelers must still choose a city, dates and number of travelers and rooms on Hipmunk's home page. They can then navigate to the search results' page and select "keyword view" on the right-hand side of the screen, pictured below.
They can then enter the type of hotel they are looking for in natural language in the search box.
Hipmunk categorizes and displays the results as perfect, partial or low matches. In various queries we made, Hipmunk produced from three to 20 "perfect matches"
