Posted by Steve Huffman, Co-founder and CTO of Hipmunk
Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Steve Huffman, Co-founder and CTO of Hipmunk, a San Francisco-based travel startup focused on taking the agony out of travel search.
We started Hipmunk in 2010 with a simple notion: take the agony out of booking travel. We wanted to build a travel website that we would want to use. Based on our own travel experiences we knew that people want a faster, easier way to search and book travel. In our recent hotel search redesign, we incorporated
Google Maps to enable our users to better identify and compare hotels located near the things they care about most.
Many of our users are tech-savvy travelers who appreciate the problem we’re trying to solve and understand what it takes on the back end to deliver a great product. Using Google Maps allows us to sort through and simplify complex travel data so we can present the factors that are most important to users in an easy-to-understand and visual way.
Travelers often want to stay close to family, a particular attraction, or even a business meeting location. That’s why 70 percent of Hipmunk visitors use maps when searching for a hotel. Our Heatmaps feature now relies on Google Maps data to highlight the areas with the highest concentration of food, nightlife, tourism, shopping, and “vice” (i.e., casinos, bars). By simply clicking Heatmaps and selecting a filter option, users can quickly and easily see which areas suit their travel style.
Since location is a top factor in deciding where to stay, another update we rolled out in the recent redesign is the ability to drop a pin near a specific point of interest. This allows users to locate a tourist attraction or relative’s home and then pick a place to stay in close proximity. Another feature that highlights the importance of location and proximity is our integration with Google Calendar. Users can even integrate their calendar so that they can easily see where their meeting or events are taking place so they can stay somewhere convenient nearby.
At Hipmunk, we consider an interactive and personalized map experience to be integral to a positive user experience. Thanks in part to Google Maps, our users avoid the agony of travel planning and spend less time planning so they can spend more time relaxing.
