[fovc]

Cannot agree more with wishcan. I sketched up a few different ideas for something like this, but never pushed on because I thought integrating with hotels, airlines, etc. Would painful. Also figured I'd need to automatically parse email confirmations, which would be a PITA.

What is it written in and how much work is left to do?

[soneil]

Parsing emails seems to have got a whole lot easier - most I interact with have started moving to schema.org microformats (eg, https://schema.org/FlightReservation and https://schema.org/LodgingReservation for flights & hotels respectively).

It seems google/gmail are backing this quite extensively, which is how it's finally found traction.

[ThomPete]

Never heard of https://schema.org/ before. Looks like a great resource thanks!

[sixdimensional]

I often wondered if automating the pain point you mention above (integrating with hotels, airlines etc.) and providing a singular, specialized API for that would be an amazing business opportunity. Seems like one of the existing travel companies could do it, or a travel agency.

[mgkimsal]

Strikes me that you could turn this around somewhat...

When people are publishing what they want, that looks to be a good starting point for travel/lodging companies to come in and make offers to these folks.

"You're looking to stay in Bucharest on Sept 18 and 19? Our hotel can offer you XZY for $ABC on those nights."

Sort of like lendingtree-model for travel. Not quite sure why that's not taken off yet, other than, perhaps, larger company IT systems?

This could possibly work well for smaller regions - contact a local chamber of commerce and have them have all the local businesses make offers to people looking to stay in areas on specific days.

Basically... define a format and let them integrate with you if they want access to the market you've defined, not the other way around.