Kayak has been tinkering with their search engine in the past few weeks (you may have noticed that they started publishing AA fares again) and just today unveiled some of the tweaks that they made.
The most interesting one I found was Kayak Insight. The tool basically takes your departure city and tells you what cities people are searching for as their search is made. I showed up and plugged in Detroit, and up popped Fort Lauderdale, $233. Pause. Then up popped Hawaii, $600. The map continues to populate like this as you browse around in a few tabs, then when you come back in a few minutes it’s got a huge map of where people are planning trips all over the world.
Cool trick, but what is it good for? Well, for Kayak, it’s a good instructional tool to tell people where they can go for how much. I can get to New Orleans next weekend for $150? Sweet! Salt Lake for $100? Rad! It’s also a fun little app to figure out just what the heck people are thinking in planning their vacation.
Watching Detroit for half hour, (I didn’t watch it the entire time. Really. I have friends.) what was the most searched region? Florida, duh. It’s cold up here.
If I were Kayak, I would collect this data over time and sell it to tourism boards as a marker of how much interest travelers have in a city. Or perhaps they’re already doing this……
Check out your own home city at kayak.com/insight.