Mar 15, 2012 at 11:32am ET by Greg Sterling

Google Flight Search is taking off to international destinations. Starting today users can search for flights to 500 airports outside the US. Google hasn't provided a comprehensive list of destinations, but most European and Asian cities I searched for were available. It's not clear how well flight search is doing or whether people are using it instead of some of the established travel sites and search engines. Right now the PC version of Flight Search is more challenging to use than some of its rivals -- Kayak for example. The mobile and iPad versions of Google Flight Search are simpler [...]

Groupon Buys Travel Search Site Uptake Mostly For Headcount

Feb 29, 2012 at 2:13am ET by Greg Sterling

Uptake was an ambitious travel site that never quite broke through. It used social data and sentiment analysis to try and provide better travel discovery and decision support to its users. Originally called Kango, we wrote about the site in 2008 when it relaunched as Uptake. AllThingsD today reported that Uptake had been acquired by Groupon for something in the "teens of millions" (between $10 and $20). The company raised roughly $14 million from venture capital inventors, so it was basically a "break even" transaction. Apparently Groupon wanted the team and will integrate most of the ke [...]

Related Topics: Groupon | Search Engines: Travel Search Engines

Google Offers Flight Search To Go

Feb 21, 2012 at 6:19pm ET by Greg Sterling

Google has been improving its flight and hotel search results over the past few months, adding capabilities and polishing the overall experience. In accordance with that "iterative" approach Google announced today that flight search will now be available on mobile devices (browser only). To trigger the verticalized results, you need to specify that you want to see flights from location A to location B (US only right now). You then get outbound and return date fields, with lists of airlines and prices. If you click through to "more Google flight search results" there's a richer presentation [...]

Big Chains Launch “Hulu For Hotels”

Jan 12, 2012 at 11:18am ET by Greg Sterling

Several major hotel chains have launched what might be described as "Hulu for hotels," a new travel search site called Roomkey. According to Tnooz, the consortium includes Choice Hotels, Hilton, Hyatt, InterContinental, Marriott and Wyndham Hotels. Starwood, operator of Sheraton and W hotels, is not among them. Hotels have been struggling for years to get consumers to come directly to them rather than various OTAs, middlemen and aggregators to whom they pay affiliate booking and lead fees. This is not the first such hotels joint venture effort. There have been several initiatives over t [...]

Google Flight Search Expands, Now Showing More Routes

Jan 11, 2012 at 4:22pm ET by Matt McGee

You can imagine my surprise when I saw my local airport -- Pasco (PSC) -- showing up in Google's flight search feature. Don't get me wrong; I love this airport … from car to gate in less than 10 minutes just can't be beat. But that's the point: It's a pretty small airport and Google's flight search has been limited to much bigger cities since its launch in September. Not anymore. Google is remaining tightlipped about exact numbers, but a spokesperson did confirm for us via email that "since launch we've more than doubled the number of domestic (i.e., U.S.) routes available in the feat [...]

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