Kayak updates search engine with “Weekend” function

by Grant Martin on

Kayak updated its search engine last week with a new “Weekend” feature that I’ve been tinkering around with for the last couple of days. It’s basically a modification to their canonical search routine that lets you make your search solely over any weekend period instead of nailed down to specific dates.

For example, if you know you want to go to Boston to see a friend some time this summer, you can select the weekend function, choose July, departing Friday, returning Monday and get queries for all weekends in July. The results will automatically give you the lowest price on the market, but if you want to exclude certain weekends you can do this on the left task bar.

In my case, the most useful aspect of this feature is for the “getaway” factor. Once in a while I get the itch to just get out of town next weekend and run a broad search across many cities over many dates. Now I can just run quick searches by changing the destination city and rerunning the query. Now if they had space for ambiguity in the destination and the dates (ie, I want to go anywhere, any weekend in August), that would be keen. I’m wondering if that query is too complicated for Kayak to handle though.

Use your own credit card to book your flight or get knocked off

by Abha Malpani on

Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) Airways recently offloaded many people from their flights because they had booked their tickets online with a credit card that wasn’t theirs, but a friend’s or a relative’s. These people had to purchase another ticket if they still wanted to fly.

I know that a few other Middle Eastern airlines, all Indian airlines, and Cathay Pacific, have the same policy to the extent that the person who’s credit card has been used to book the flight, needs to accompany you to check-in.

When my parents came to visit me in Madrid from France, I booked them flights on my credit card; similarly when my brother and I traveled around Spain, all flight/train/hostel bookings were made under my name. If all airlines, or any travel-service related company for that matter, begin using this policy, they may lose lots of business from online purchasers so I wonder if it will ever become standard online booking policy.

It’s all to prevent credit card fraud, but seriously inconvenient, no?

Low on travel money? How to virtually road trip for free

by Anna Brones on

This year the popular summer travel season doesn’t seem quite so enticing. Gas is over $4 a gallon, the dollar is so low that in Europe they’re getting used for scrap paper and airlines now have you paying to check baggage. What is a travel hungry person to do?

Fortunately there’s Streetviewr, a site that compiles just what the website’s name indicates: street views (thanks to the technology over at Google). With streets from over 40 American cities, a little time spent browsing the site is almost like a good road trip… but for free.

Ok ok, obviously sitting in front of the computer is not as good as actually traveling, but we’ll take what we can get. Here’s to cheap summer internet travels!

A portrait of global proportions

by Anna Brones on

Drawing to scale can be hard enough, I can’t even imagine attempting to draw on the whole globe. But that’s exactly what artist Erik Nordenankar did. On March 17, 2008 Nordenankar sent a briefcase containing a GPS tracking device with the global shipping company DHL. He gave the company exact instructions on where to go and in what order, and 55 days later the briefcase came back to its departure point, Stockholm. Using the information from the GPS, Nordenankar created the above image. The continuous line of the drawing is exactly 110,664 kilometers long. Now that’s one big portrait.

Update: Yes, this is a hoax. ‘Biggest drawing in world’ revealed as hoax — thanks to everyone who sent this in. –Ed.

Tripkick your way to a better hotel room

by Jeremy Kressmann on

If you travel at all for business, you’ve probably experienced your fair share of horrendous, anonymous hotel rooms. You know that room you had that smelled like a combination of mildew and bleach? Or with the million dollar view of the garbage bins out the back? What about that room where the construction crew jackhammers woke you up at 7am? Yeah, been there.

Perhaps then we should all take a look at Tripkick, a website that promises to help find “the hotel room that’s perfect for you.” Rather than focusing on overall ratings for hotels, Tripkick helps users rate and review particular rooms in each hotel. Looking for a nice view of the bay at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco? Request a room ending in either 05, 06, 07 or 08. How about if you want to find the quietest room at the W in Chicago? Stay away from rooms ending in numbers 28-33, which are noisier because of the nearby El trains.

While Tripkick offers some interesting functionality, it’s not for everyone. Hotel bargain hunters are at an obvious disadvantage here – mostly because hotels frequently assign less desirable rooms to customers who book the most discounted rates. It’s going to be a much tougher sell to get upgraded to nice “bay view” room when you booked a 20% off room using Priceline. Not to mention most of us are not really considering swanky places like the Four Seasons, which form the majority of Tripkick’s hotel reviews. But frequent business travelers take note – a site like Tripkick can mean the difference between a good night’s sleep or yet another jackhammer wake-up call.