As I was booking a couple work flights today, I was reminded how much I love Hipmunk. It’s my favorite site for initial flight and hotel search. It’s simple, visual and smart.
Flights
Hipmunk takes your search criteria and assesses price, flight duration, and number of stopovers before it ranks recommendations in its visual timeline view. The user-friendly tool makes it easy to see all available options for each leg of a flight and the associated costs.
Hotels
Hipmunk displays options on local maps that allow the user to filter by price, amenities, chain name, property type and neighborhood type – again, logical and user-friendly.
Purchase
You don’t actually perform your transaction on Hipmunk. It’s strictly a search tool. Based on the options you’ve selected, Hipmunk sends you to the hotel or airline site to book.
As a web site planner, I always appreciate simplifiers. And that’s exactly what Hipmunk is. Give it a whirl.
- First, I think you’ll love it as much as I do for trip planning.
- Second, we can learn a few things about usability from this site.
- The takeaway: remove the fluff and give the user what they want.
Sometimes the best sites are the simplest sites. They’re not trying to be all things to all people. Rather, they’re the best at the one thing they know that people are on their site to do.
