Travel Searching Made Easier

It seems pretty obvious that, especially at this time of year, when the weather is changing and you’ve got summer vacation on the brain, travel is a big part of what people search for on the web. You want to figure out where to go and what to do ‘ and there’s so much out there. People’s travel photos on Flickr, travel experiences on blogs, it just goes on, and the search box is where most of us start.

We ask a lot out of that one search box, and travel is a good example of our evolving search needs. You can get maps, weather, news and more directly from the search box, and now you’ll had direct access to flight and hotel pricing and availability via Yahoo! FareChase, a pioneer of travel search.

Yahoo! FareChase (which is now in general availability) is a travel search engine that searches across many airline sites like AA.com, hotel sites like Sheraton.com, and on-line travel agency websites such as Orbitz.com and Cheaptickets.com, to give searchers a comprehensive set of prices and availability for flights and hotel rooms that is available on the web. Now with a simple web search, you can see what’s available across multiple sites without a separate visit to each site. And, the new satellite imagery we just launched in maps is also available on Yahoo! FareChase. :-)

So how does this all work?

Let’s say you’re in California and you’re planning a trip to New York this spring. You type in ‘Flights to New York’ into Yahoo! Search, and here’s what you see:

If you are logged in, we pick up your location based on your user preference. What you see above are the best prices for flights to New York from your area. You can then add more information, such as travel dates, directly on the search engine results page to refine your search.

You can do the same for hotels using the keyword ‘compare’. Type in ‘Compare Las Vegas Hotels’ into Yahoo! Search and you’ll see the best prices and dates for different hotel classes.

If you were to click on the links above you’d get a map-centric hotel search view on Yahoo! FareChase, which will help you get a sense of where hotels are located, such as on the Strip.

What else. You might want to check out other user’s travel plans who are considering staying at the same hotels as you from integration with the Trip Planner beta. This’ll help you get a sense of what other people think of the hotels you’re considering, and you might get some ideas for cool stuff to do on your trip.

Please give the feature a try and see how it works for you, we welcome your thoughts and comments below.

Fiona Lake Waslander
Yahoo! Travel