Okay, so I thought I'd be able to use this as a web app and mobile app. Wrong, and I think that's a mistake. For large purchase decisions I generally use my computer rather than my phone.
I was interested, though, so I downloaded the app. The only option is to use Facebook to login. They say they've done this in order to cut down on the time it takes to launch the site, and will add an alternative later. Unfortunately that's not good enough for me, and I won't be using Facebook to login.
It seems really odd to lock the app behind a login anyway. Why not open it up and ALLOW (not force) people to log in? If you're trying to attract customers, let them use it! Don't require them to download an app and create a login before they even know if it's worth it.
Zillow does this well. You can use the search and see the value of the site right away, but you don't have to log in unless you want to start favoriting homes and saving searches. These features are useful and it makes sense to me. This just seems like poor planning for launch.
Really good points. We're figuring this out as we go along and really didn't anticipate the backlash against Facebook login. As for requiring login at all, we do think personalization is key to the experience and that's the best way to guarantee it. But the Zillow analogy is a good one and we've been working on building out a browse option. This is only the first iteration!
The problem with demanding a login / email address up front is that it has value and is implicit permission to spam away. This is before someone has the opportunity to see if the app/site is what they wanted in the first place. It is a terrible way to start a relationship.
Great to hear you're listening! Keep in mind that HN isn't the world - people here tend to be more skeptical and more careful with privacy. Still I hope you apply the feedback. I'll look forward to the next iteration, because I do love your concept.
I don't understand, why is this an app and not a website? Also has some interesting reviews with it's 2 stars average on Google Play. Users seem to not like the fact that it requires facebook login, it's laggy and doesn't have a great UI. Personally haven't tried.
Hey, this is one of the founders. App not a website for now for a variety of reasons:
1. Personalization is key to what we do and people are more comfortable signing in to something on mobile
2. The mobile use case encourages us to keep the feature set small and useful - on web it's easy to keep adding features
3. Mobile still more of an open playing field at this point
I'm not sure all these reasons are the best reasons, but we had to build some way and this is just a start. We'll definitely have a web component down the line.
Just to give a difference of opinion, I don't think that this is necessarily representative of the entire HN community. I for one maintain a FB account almost exclusively for apps like this, so that I can reuse my social graph.
Disclaimer: I've done work in the past with one of the founders on a former iteration of this product.
Yours is not a bad idea, having a separate account, but I think that the number of people that have one is definately a minority respect the people that will just ditch the app because of it, worse, on mobile they will leave a bad review.
1. Are you sure people are more comfortable signing in on mobile? I'm not - I think twice as hard about letting people access a device that knows where I am. More important, have you done research into whether your target customer would sign in with mobile? I might buy a game or try a new app, but I rarely make any significant purchase on mobile.
2. I don't think you need to restrict yourself in order to constrain yourselves as long as you consider features in a "will this work well on mobile" mindset.
3. I disagree that mobile is a more open playing field. What exactly is your barrier with a browser on my computer vs. a browser on my smaller (phone) computer? Perhaps I misunderstand, but this doesn't make any sense to me.
Glad to hear you'll be adding a web component. As I mentioned elsewhere, I'd also suggest you allow users to try the thing before requiring them to download and login - especially with Facebook, but even without. Service sites like Zillow generally do this well.
Whenever I see tools like this, I have to point out Flightfox - http://www.flightfox.com. If you're thinking of booking a trip that could run on the expensive side, there's no doubt in my mind that experts will do better than any single tool out there (or yourself) ever could... you'll pay a small fee to run a contest, but you'll still likely absorb that cost in savings.
Do yourself a favor and run a contest. Even better, spend some time trying to find the lowest price you can, then pay the $40+ to watch a few experts demolish your travel-planning skills.
Often times they'll find miles hacking / loopholes / etc. that only a human could put together. The various experts behind that site are ridiculously good at getting you deals. The more complex and "open" your trip, the more space they have to save you money.
Have used and loved Flightfox, but it's more for elaborate itineraries. I don't want to pay a $39 finders fee to let me know when there's a flight to Miami for less than $200
The first version was built with Facebook login on purpose, because we offload the social graph building to FB. Destinations are suggested based on where your friends currently live, and where they've previously been or want to go in the future.
It's not just about not bothering with user registration and passwords, it's about using the data from FB to give users added value.
We are in the early stages of building a completely non-social experience, including possibly a fully-logged out mode, which will use even more signals to suggest destinations. We don't have an ETA to announce for this as of yet.
Ugh really? Travel for me is almost exclusively about getting away from my "social graph." If I'm taking a vacation it is hopefully no where near anyone I know.
I just don't get it. I have an upcoming vacation, where we are generally going to Spain/Portugal, but don't care what city we start in, and our dates are flexible. I thought this app might be useful for this case. So I plug in Lisbon, Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, etc. And my Flights section just says "No Deals" still. How do I get flights to show up? I'm pretty sure there are a few flights to Europe from NYC.
(Also, you probably should take New Haven Tweed airport out of the list when it's finding closest airports. Because that airport is no one's homebase, given it only flies to Philadelphia.)
We're still working on upping our coverage of all routes at all times, but for now you'll only see something from NYC to Spain/Portugal if we find something really out of the ordinary - for us, usually means 8 cents per mile or less. For now, I'd recommend using Skyscanner.com and searching for flights from NYC to Spain or NYC to Portugal. Also, I'm jealous, I wish I were going to Spain/Portugal with you.
If you're flexible, try Nowcation (http://nowcation.com/) built by a team of students out of UMich or take a look at Kayak Explore (http://www.kayak.com/explore). The only downside is that it doesn't learn your preferences over time which will help Hitlist find more esoteric destinations that you might not have normally considered.
Maybe if they integrate Rome2Rio's API,they can offer more options since you can combine airfare + local transit costs to even more destinations.
Farecast got bought by Microsoft and was used in Bing Travel, but it seems to be gone now. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_Travel), "As of January 2014, the fare prediction feature has been removed."
Farecast predicts airfare price movement over the next 7 days for a set itinerary (dates, origin/destination). This service tells you when you should go on vacation, not when you should buy your airfare ticket.
The idea sounds good. I always thought why most travel/ticket sites don't have a feature like that (the search always assumes you have set date to leave and return, there's no way to search, e.g., "all flights for the next 10 days, sorted by price").
It will let you do searches like "flights between <date> and a month later, staying <n> to <m> nights"
You can also put in travel agent routing codes, which let you do stuff like "flights on American Airlines, connecting through Atlanta" or "not connecting though Chicago". Very handy.
Adioso (http://www.adioso.com) seems quite good in that regard. I've had contact with one of the developers from submitting a bug report and they're very friendly and seem on the ball.
The trouble with all these sites, at least to me, is that they still make me do so much searching and research. And I still have to have a specific destination in mind. I'd say at any time I'm vaguely interested in hundreds of different trips: right now, I'd probably book a ticket to anywhere warm this weekend if I could find something for under $200, and I could justify flying out to SF if it cost less than $300, and I'm planning to go to Zagreb in the next two months so knowing when those prices are good would be useful. But I'm not going to sit at my computer typing in every beach destination to ITA's matrix, or setting up a Kayak alert for each one. We'd like Hitlist to be an ever-smarter travel agent who is monitoring all this stuff for me... and maybe in the future will also know about my airline alliance and stopover preferences too.
One use-case I often have, fwiw, is "what's the cheapest transatlantic flight right now?", which I have to find through trial-and-error. Once I know that, I can often find a cheap way to get to/from the relevant endpoints which doesn't show up on a regular fare search (train, bus, low-cost airline, etc.).
Of course a full end-to-end search that took into account all travel modalities and included all the low-cost carriers would be even better, but that seems like a more difficult information-aggregation problem.
Kayak Explore is pretty good for that. Select your city in the US, then check non-stop and Europe. It's on a map and I would prefer a list, but it does the job. Belfast and Copenhagen are the cheapest transatlantic in March, for instance.
Hypothetically speaking, if everyone that flies used this and only bought tickets when it told them the prices were low, wouldn't that eventually swap the prices of tickets since those prices fluctuate based on popularity?
And then even further after that people would continue to only buy tickets at the swapped low prices and at the end of the line prices would all even out at all times.
I long for a world where everyone uses this! But that's a ways off. Regardless, I think there's a need for a much more efficient exchange where airline tickets are concerned - that's part of why we're building this. Right now many, many people want to travel, but the current search paradigm makes it incredibly difficult to find the things relevant to them, so they never end up traveling. Buying tickets isn't just a function of price, it's also having time off work, having people to visit or travel with, and knowing enough about a destination to want to go there.
Basically you'd have an algorithm arms race between the airlines (who have sophisticated systems to predict estimate which tickets are in low demand and adjusting the prices according to what's actually happening) and the app-makers seeking to increase the demand for cut-priced tickets
The net result, if enough people used it (and loads of people didn't have business flights where they were completely indifferent about price so long as the timings worked) would be more rational and even pricing across the board. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
Because some people might not realize São Paulo might be a big deal if he just said the name. Of course, best would have been if he had mentioned both facts.
Google Flight Search (and the ITA matrix that powers it) also lacks pricing for some of the cheapest carriers, although I'm not sure how much better your app is in that respect.
If I was building a "flexible destination" app I'd be particularly keen to offer hotel bundles too, since they're higher margin and well suited to people lazily looking for the cheapest vacation meeting basic criteria within a broad time frame.
I was interested, though, so I downloaded the app. The only option is to use Facebook to login. They say they've done this in order to cut down on the time it takes to launch the site, and will add an alternative later. Unfortunately that's not good enough for me, and I won't be using Facebook to login.
It seems really odd to lock the app behind a login anyway. Why not open it up and ALLOW (not force) people to log in? If you're trying to attract customers, let them use it! Don't require them to download an app and create a login before they even know if it's worth it.
Zillow does this well. You can use the search and see the value of the site right away, but you don't have to log in unless you want to start favoriting homes and saving searches. These features are useful and it makes sense to me. This just seems like poor planning for launch.