[brianpan]

Absolutely agree that there is a use case for the open-ended search- it's powerful, cool, and not yet addressed by anyone. My point is that the "traditional" search also has it's strengths, especially when the trip is not going to be open-ended: travelling to a wedding or graduation, travelling for business, travelling with a group of friends where the schedule and destination is agreed upon.

In fact, thinking about it more, I strongly suspect that personality (in a Myers-Briggs J/P way) has a lot to do with how we prefer to travel. Some people plan everything out ahead of time down to the hour, some people close their eyes and spin the globe.

I think the other factor is how often you fly. If you don't travel/vacation very often, you are more likely to be travelling for a specific reason where dates and destination is known. If you travel very often, you will probably have more opportunities to pick a random place to go for the weekend.