

Show HN: Nowcation - find spontaneous travel deals - rjvir
http://nowcation.com/

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dpcx
It would be nice if the departure locations were alphabetical, or at least let
me type in to search.

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ssharp
Very nice idea. I love the idea of being able to find random, good value,
vacation ideas.

It would be nice to be able to apply some filters, or to have your algorithm
filter out some of the junk ideas. For example, I was given several options to
fly somewhere for one day and then return the next day. Some of the
itineraries actually had me landing in the late afternoon and having to come
home early the following morning. This is not a trip most would be interested
in seeing and it adds noise to the results page.

The list of cities also seems like it should be organized alphabetically or by
state. I didn't understand at all how it's organized now.

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templaedhel
This is awesome! I've been tossing this kind of idea around for awhile,
because every once and awhile I find myself browsing hipmunk for "cheap
flights today" to see if there's anything interesting, and a UI with the
express purpose of selling short notice cheap flights has a lot of potential.

My thoughts:

\- When I'm booking a vacation, especially on short notice I'm going to need
lodging. A lot of the price is hidden in the lodging and so I can't be sure if
these are good deals or not. Going forward, it might be possible to load
lodging in (possibly bake the deals a few times a day to reduce server load)
and display 1 singular price that includes everything.

\- While you're at it, why not keep playing up this instant vacation thing,
take it to the next level. I click the button, pay, and you dispatch a uber to
my house to take me to the airport.

\- Selling package deals allows you to skim a little off the top in the way of
"booking fees", but more interesting is the possibly to use yield management
to buy tickets when they are the cheapest, then resell as a "nowcation" later.

Hope you keep working on this.

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rjvir
These are all awesome suggestions. If a service did this for me, I would love
it forever. I will definitely look into the quickest ways to implement stuff
like this.

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jaddison
Not sure how you're doing your 'booking' to photo matching, but you've got a
great pic of Toronto, Ontario matched with a booking to Ontario, California. I
noticed this after switching to the Seattle section.

Nice simple presentation.

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stagas
Just letting you know that avast pops a malicious url warning for trying to
load <http://www.ineedstorage.com/images/sd.jpg> when you enter the site.

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mosselman
Me too.

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Trufa
Brilliant!

I was just asking about that! <http://travel.stackexchange.com/q/11620/>

I hope you have plans for implementing it in Europe sometime!

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usaphp
Hmm...It did not work for me. It says flight from New York to Orlando is just
$128 but when I clicked to buy it - it sent me to Kayak and it was $210.

Great idea tho...

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jmediast
heh, the devs were telling me about an issue they solved with caching, sounds
like a side-effect

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ap22213
I love sites like this. But, it would also be extra great if the site's price
included estimates for the cost of lodging (say, at a particular quality
level).

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mhb
Isn't it obvious that the departure locations need to be sorted? Or do people
who want to go somewhere now not care from where they leave?

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lhnz
Is there something like this for people living in London?

I would specifically like something with weekend deals if such a thing exists.

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ceeK
Me too. This would definitely be of interest to me.

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krauses
Great idea. I was looking for a solution like this last night as I was trying
to plan a last second trip. I hope you can pull this off. I often get random
urges to take a 1-3 day trip, but I want to be able to find a flight that
leaves the day that the urge hits.

It would be awesome to see deals from Hotel Tonight inline with the flights.

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quiquebras
I like it. Where are you getting the data from? Could it be expanded to
include other cities outside the US?

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vineet
Great idea, nicely executed.

It seems that the price estimates are only for the flight costs (and not for
lodging costs) - I was confused about this a little.

I would love to see something similar for lodging costs as well.

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stavrianos
Heads up- That faux styled dropdown is very difficult to use with a
smartphone.

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nmcfarl
Or the iPad. Took 5, increasingly slow and methodical tries to actually get
what I was trying for.

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Arelius
This is cool... What data sources do you use?

Something I've always wanted is to be able to say, I'm looking for a flight
from x to y, email me if it ever gets X cheap.

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arthurquerou
This is GENIOUS. Nothing more to say. Now buy some ads, contact big news
websites and profit. Maybe take some vacations, I know a great website to find
awesome deals ! ;)

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camdroid
Well, think I'll be taking a vacation sometime soon!

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merlish
This really is a cool idea. Who doesn't occasionally yearn to get away from it
all?

I'm not in the US, though that's not your fault.

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jmediast
Looks nice!

I'd like to see a feature where I give it a budget, maybe a temperature
preference, and it books me a random trip.

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thedanyaal
Pretty cool idea. I'd like to see the students expand on this by adding some
filter features like location, date, etc.

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jpwagner
Is this really a common use-case? When I travel it's always driven by the
"where" not by the "now"...

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krschultz
Common enough to make a living off it. There are times when I want to take a
big planned out vacation. There are other times where I just want to sit on a
beach for 4 days, and really any beach will do.

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mikaelf
Nice idea, but nooo contact information, nor an about page reachable from the
landing page?

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steveplace
Pretty sure "wanna get away" is trademarked by Southwest Airlines.

Overall, great layout.

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zan2434
Gorgeous photos. Love the simple UX. Watch your backs, Expedia, Travelzoo,
etc.

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jtdaugh
Isnt this just a prettier version of expedia or any of those travel sites.

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rjvir
The main difference between Nowcation and Expedia is that Nowcation helps you
find your destination. With Expedia, Orbitz, and other travel sites, you have
to know where you want to go before finding deals.

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pkabra
neat... found a flight to shanghai for 75% off... will keep an eye on this for
future deals... do you guys do tracking? like can i track future deals for
shanghai?

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smit
Would be awesome if you added Boston as an origin :)

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dlennox
+1

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lubibul
This is so smart! Really nice animations, too.

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kvirani
Very cool. Can you support Canada?

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achalv
Woah. Respect++;

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achalv
Also, I like how you've tweaked Isotope.js and got individual content boxes to
become bigger on click with the slick animation. Good stuff. :D

