Cool idea, but the UX is very unintuitive. For example, when trying to search for a hotel in LA, every time I zoom (the mousewheel doesn't work?) it begins searching. Slowly. When it finally updates (I have clicked zoom several times by now), it zooms out again to the first zoom level. This really needs to be fixed so that it behaves more like Google Maps' search, where I can continue to zoom in until I have reached my intended geographical area, and then the search could finalize. It's fine if it searches as I zoom, but it's not fine if it refreshes the map. It's almost unusable unless you uncheck the box to disable searching when the map is moved.
My thoughts about the landing page - It's pretty, but again, the UX is bad. While the screen is loading, I see the slogan drop in (pieces at a time), a second tagline drop in, and then a how it works button. By the time the search has dropped in (this is really your call to action, right? You want people to begin searching, and see it right away), I have already scrolled passed it down the page looking for the search. When I come back up and finally see "Oh, there it is", I've wasted a ton of time looking for it. I recommend that you make this static. The slogan can drop in if you'd like, but this needs to have a permanent place on the landing page.
Upon searching, it took as long as it did to write this paragraph to find any hotels. It returned 11 results, and I'm searching near USC in Los Angeles. Zoomed in a bit further to only encompass 2 hotels, and it took roughly 11 seconds to find them. Anything you can do to speed this up?
It's a neat concept, just hoping to give some constructive criticism.
First of all thanks for the feedback, I always love when critics are useful.
I try to go point by point.
We took a conscious decision disabling the scrolling wheel as zoom in/out because otherwise it would have triggered too many "refine searches". In addition today the search is even slower due to the huge traffic we're getting and it's definitely something we should work on.
But I agree, the map is definitely something we should work on.
Regarding the landing page I think it's still a speed problem, but I'll take a closer look to this.
> We took a conscious decision disabling the scrolling wheel as zoom in/out because otherwise it would have triggered too many "refine searches".
Tip: Any operation that's reliant on mouse events should be throttled or debounced -- they are just too noisy. For mapping, I have done debounces as long as two seconds without the delay being obvious. I suspect due to the style of user interaction in combination with the loading animations from the map itself.
really appreciated - it's somewhat debounced already, but it seems to be not quite right... I'd be curious to hear about how you went about debouncing (what time delays on which specific actions, zoom, moving the map)
Option one: Use the built-in `idle` event on the top-level map object. This basically does all the debouncing for you, though I don't remember off the top of my head whether this event happens before or after the `tilesloaded` event. The distinction would only be important if you want to wait for the map to visually update before displaying the results.
Option two: I think for your use case just listening on the single `bounds_changed` event will do what you want. That should trigger for all types of map movement or zooming. For the callback, use a closure which clears and sets a timeout event with the desired debounce time; no need to overcomplicate it. Then it's just tuning the delay until it hits that sweet spot between firing too often and obvious visual delays.
Great product idea. I was quite taken aback by how similar the UI and UX is to Airbnb's though [1]. Of course that's not necessarily a bad thing - it's a much nicer interface than most hotel comparison sites - but it's extreme to the point of brand confusion. My first instinct was to check if this was a spin-off business!
I believe it's just a design/interaction solution becoming popular. Then of course when both the websites are dealing accommodation similarities become stronger, but think about it, we're talking about enhancing the really relevant information: Location, picture and price.
And that's the best design solution to do it.
Err, this is a pretty common bootstrap style theme. It's nearly identical to Vitality, a $10 theme on wrapbootstrap. The maps page is actually google powered in both cases.
Your product targets other type of customer, but I want to share my chores I experienced. Supposedly I plan a trip across USA, by car, for example NY->LA. I don't have exact places at what date I will be at which city. I can approximate 600km-900km drive a day. If there would be application that showed the best hotel on path with driving instructions+reservation it would be godsent.
There's apps like Roadtrippers and Furkot that will show you lodging along your route (along with dining, attractions, etc), but I don't know any that actually handles booking/price comparison as well.
I used to drive truck with my stepfather (I'm serious) and something like that would have been amazing, especially when we had two days unexpectedly off and only 400 miles for the next trailer...
Incidentally, if you ever really want to see America, get a commercial license.
Right now we're focusing more on users who already know their destination and not on users with an open destination like in your case.
But this sounds like a pretty awesome product.
Our way we get the best deal is checking daily if the price of your hotel decreased and getting that for you. In this way you'll have the best rate available on the market from now to the day you check in.
If you book directly on the hotel today it doesn't mean than tomorrow the hotel won't drop the price, so there's no absolute truth in saying that the best deals are available just dealing with the hotel. Sometimes is true, that's why we're negotiating pilots with some hotel chains (i cannot tell more, sorry)
I will try to give this advice in the gentlest way possible both because it isn't a big deal, and to avoid a thread-destroying argument: Might I suggest you adopt a different phrase (which I see you've used a few times just in this conversation) other than "thanks man"? I'm not offended by it, and most other people probably wouldn't be either, but it does strike me as making the unfortunate assumption that everyone on this forum is a man. (I know that many people who use the word "man" in this way don't really mean to be referring to literal males. I'm one of them, in fact. I have been known to call my wife 'man.' But the impression will remain, for some--especially among people who don't know you.)
I'm sure you don't mean to offend, and you're just trying to be friendly and appreciative--and I would not blame you for bristling a bit at an off-topic scolding by the PC police. But it would cost you nothing to just say "thanks," and it could save you some grief in the future.
Just a thought from a friend.
Edit - I should have said this first: the service seems really cool. I'll try it next time I travel.
Great Job. From my experience the best deal is often from the hotel itself (no fees to Booking, Expedia ...), are you including hotels' prices directly in your listing or are you using some OTA's APIs ?
Of the hotels I've viewed, it appears the images are hosted on TravelNow, which (I believe) is owned by Expedia. If that is the case, they are probably using EAN's API for part or all of it.
dev here; yea, we're using EAN for sourcing the hotels that people initially book - but we have many more other OTAs integrated for tracking prices
the way you could look at it is that we try and capture peoples traveling intent with an API which is relatively easy and fast-performing, then we try in our own time to find something better
I don't understand the hype... this is destroying the market and will cut margins of hotels, potentially affecting quality in the long run. How can travellers profit from it longterm?
Not sure, since this is driving prices down in a market already plagued by high booking fees from travel providers. In which way do you see people benefiting from that beyond saving a buck here and there?
Our algorithm is based on daily rates from different providers as Kayak or Trivago does. What we do on the top of it is to keep checking day by day looking for better rates and getting that for you.
It's beyond price comparison websites.
there's some pretty interesting statistics to do with price changes - chances of finding something better are biggest when you book somewhat further in advance (say, 60 days) & travel to big cities - then we do find better prices in about 50% of the cases
what makes me happiest is crazy stuff, like a $600 better rate for a $1300 hotels somewhere on the strip in LA (happened a few weeks ago)
My thoughts about the landing page - It's pretty, but again, the UX is bad. While the screen is loading, I see the slogan drop in (pieces at a time), a second tagline drop in, and then a how it works button. By the time the search has dropped in (this is really your call to action, right? You want people to begin searching, and see it right away), I have already scrolled passed it down the page looking for the search. When I come back up and finally see "Oh, there it is", I've wasted a ton of time looking for it. I recommend that you make this static. The slogan can drop in if you'd like, but this needs to have a permanent place on the landing page.
Upon searching, it took as long as it did to write this paragraph to find any hotels. It returned 11 results, and I'm searching near USC in Los Angeles. Zoomed in a bit further to only encompass 2 hotels, and it took roughly 11 seconds to find them. Anything you can do to speed this up?
It's a neat concept, just hoping to give some constructive criticism.