Online accommodation website Hotels.com has launched a search tool offering travellers a new way to find their hotel.
The Hotels.com Visualiser, termed as a first for the travel industry, is a new visual approach to searching for hotels that allows travellers to use their “VisualDNA” to find hotels that match their needs.
The tool has been developed by Hotels.com in partnership with technology company Imagini.
Nigel Pocklington, managing director, Hotels.com, said this is the first time that travellers have been able to make their hotel selection based solely on their visual responses.
Hotels.com launches new search tool using VisualDNA technology | Eyefortravel
Hi Happy Hotelier,
Have you tested this out at all? I thought the concept was pretty interesting and gave it a go…the search results were sufficently targeted, but it really makes you jump through a lot of hoops to finally get recommendations.
Likewise, I think it’s harder to be as precise with photos as you can be with words, and as such I found some of the visual clues not to be sufficiently specific.
Overall, though, I’m impressed they took the initiative to develop this product and it does follow broader industry trends regarding visual identification and authentication.
Pete
Hi Pete
No I didn’t yet. I was fudzing around with my new version and the quick post plugin.
This was my second post via quickpost
Guido
OK, I tried that and I loved it. And, I did it for cities I know well (Rome, Paris) and it was accurate. I wonder, though, why they put the “who you’re traveling with” later in the process – if you’re traveling with a family, say, the pictures could all be of families doing different things. There was one of a family dining outside on a balcony of some kind, which looked lovely, but I didn’t choose it because I was not sure if the family was the important part of the picture or not.