
Why I don't use recent travel startups - dlitwak
http://blog.mozio.com/why-the-recent-wave-of-travel-startups-are-mo
======
dkrich
Awesome post. I'm in 100% agreement with the author. It takes courage to write
an analysis like this, knowing that there are some high-profile people backing
Hipmunk, which in turn causes a lot of people on HN to defend it as well.

The first time I read about Hipmunk solving "the problem of travel search",
the first thought I had was "what problem?" I looked at Hipmunk and I couldn't
see what it did that was so radically better than Kayak, which I think
actually does a great job. If there are people who enjoy Hipmunk, then I say
fantastic, but to me, travel search is not actually broken.

In the comments section I wrote what I believed to be a well-reasoned comment
making similar comments to those made in the OP's post and was promptly
downvoted and even received a sarcastic response from one of the founders. No
big deal, but after close to a year, I still maintain that what I said was
valid. Sometimes I think people get stuck working aggressively on a problem
before they really confront the reality of whether the problem is real or an
illusion that was created in order to build a business.

That said, I do think the site looks great and I hope it does phenomenally
well. I don't have any ill-will towards the company or its founders, but I'm
just not convinced that this is a startup that is built to solve its users'
problems. It seems that a lot of successful smart people proclaimed that
travel search was a major problem and that this was the solution, and that in
turn got the business a lot of support. I'm just not convinced.

~~~
dlitwak
Thansk dkrich. What I find pretty funny is that I definitely complimented
hipmunk. Pretty sure I said it was useful and had a wonderful interface haha.
I never insulted them but merely stated the reason why I don't use it. But for
some reason not being head over heels in love with the product, having
something slightly critical to say gets people incredibly defensive.

I also don't have any ill will towards Hipmunk, I think the product looks
great. But yes, I also agree that, for flights, travel isn't 'broken' so
badly. If it was, Hipmunk would be overflowing with users. Last article I read
they were having trouble attracting new users.

Now for other forms of transportation . . . I'm going to have to disagree with
you that travel isn't broken.

------
gameshot911
For me the main appeal of Hipmunk's interface is that it makes it easy to use
'soft' search parameters.

Every travel agency will let you search for flights based on price range,
departure time, arrival time, and layover time. However, I usually don't care
if a flight leaves at 5 or 4:45, or I'm willing to pay an extra $20 if it
means my layover is reduced by an hour. With a normal search interface I'd
either have to do multiple searches, or relax the limits of all the parameters
and have to sort though a large breadth of results. On top of this, the
results are presented in such a way that I need to consider a single variable
at a time ("hmm okay this flight leaves a bit earlier, but it costs __ and
arrives at ___. This flight has a minimal layover, but it leaves at ___ and
costs ___").

In contrast, the interface Hipmunk has developed makes it exceedingly easy to
view all the variables at once, and to quickly narrow down flights I'd
potentially be interested in. Not only is the timeline interface much easier
to understand than say expedia's "sort results by one variable at a time", but
it's an intuitive way to compare the overall utility of multiple flights at
once. And since at the end of the day that's exactly what I'm looking for in a
travel website - an intuitive way to quickly compare numerous options and
choose the 'best' one according to my personal heuristics - I use Hipmunk when
I need to book a flight.

------
brd
I could be mistaken here but pushing out negative marketing before you release
your product seems like an awfully bad idea for a startup. This isn't the kind
of attention you want and you run the risk of completely turning off potential
customers who are currently fans of the services you're frowning upon.

~~~
robryan
If they found the current options to be great there wouldn't be a lot of
motivation to start their alternative.

~~~
sliverstorm
Your parents' argument is that coming right out of the gate publicly putting
down your competitors may not be the best way to enter the race.

~~~
dlitwak
and my argument silverstorm is that I didn't insult them: "Hipmunk. Don't get
me wrong, the interface is beautiful. However, I don't use it. This is pretty
cool, I won't deny, and it looks gorgeous." Apparently not being completely
100% head over heels for a YC company is interpreted as 'insulting' them.

------
silverlight
I just have to say that I have never tried any of these other tools, but
lumping Hipmunk in with them is doing it a disservice. It's not about social
travel or any other gimmick -- it's about better travel searches. Period.

I've used it the last 3 times I've booked a flight, and I would never use
anything else. It makes it so easy to get the flight we prefer it's
ridiculous.

~~~
dlitwak
I agree, but the title of the blog post is why I don't use them. I don't use
Hipmunk. I don't use many of these new services, all for different reasons. I
don't use Hipmunk not because its useless, far from it, but because my habit
is to use Kayak, and I guess for the type of travel searches I do on a regular
basis, I don't see a reason to switch.

------
eof
Hrm.. I don't use any social travel whatevers; but I have used hipmunk
exclusively to look for flights since the first time I ever tried it.

It is an order of magnitude better than kayak/priceline/whatever.

Putting down hipmunk before launching when you are going to compete with them
with weak arguments like "sure its good but I use something inferior anyway"--
seems.. transparent.

~~~
martey
" _Putting down hipmunk before launching when you are going to compete with
them..._ "

I argue that this is the main problem with the entire blog post. I would
rather than Mozio actually showed _why_ they are better than all of the social
travel startups they mention, as opposed to disparaging them while their own
homepage links to a Launchrock signup page.

~~~
dlitwak
We aren't social travel martey. Never said we were. The post was about the
entire travel industry. We barely mention our own project in the post exactly
because we thought it would take away from the argument: we aren't making a
sales pitch or trying to sell anything as we aren't in the social travel
discovery space and aren't really catering to the same market as hipmunk (we
are targeting budget travelers who want to compare buses, trains, the
backpacker type).

------
wdewind
I totally disagree about the usefulness of the Hipmunk interface: visualizing
it is exactly what I need because for $X dollars I'm wiling to wake up a
little earlier, or get in a little later and the opposite.

The reason I no longer use Hipmunk is that every ticket I've gotten from them
(4 round trips total) has been standby, and I was never told that when I
bought it. I was moved to a later flight because I was standby on the last one
and the experience was soiled for me.

------
spravin
When I look for flights, I check bing, kayak, orbitz as well as hipmunk. Which
one do I prefer? Simple: the one that gives me the best fare. Unfortunately it
ends up being a different one each time.

~~~
amorphid
I like Kayak, too. Hipmunk is neat, but it's almost too slick. I essentially
want to know the price, departure time, and arrival time. Everything beyond
that doesn't really add much. What I'd love too see is something that simply
allows me to see the cheapest flight between too points without having to put
in the travel dates.

~~~
calbear81
Without dates, do you mean you're flexible and you just want to see the best
price in the next 60 days or something? Kayak explore might work
(kayak.com/explore)

------
vgurgov
i am so happy someone finally said this about Hipmunk! i can sign for every
word in this.

about me: i travel across the globe 1-4 times a month. see absolutely no
reason to prefer it to kayak

i found that some YC-hardcore fans of hipmunk that love-love-love it travel
few times/year at most.

~~~
adebelov
@vgurgov, guess who inspired @dlitwak to post this? :)

------
yason
I must say I didn't even know of this "social travel" thing. I've heard of
some of those startups before but I've probably just dismissed them right off
the bat if they didn't happen to immediately give me not only a good answer
but a good problem, too.

What I usually do is find the cheapest offers for flights from a few selected
places such as Hipmunk, Kayak, Ebookers and Momondo, and then proceed to find
accommodation by myself. I have a few known places in certain cities already,
found empirically and if I don't, I'll just search the web until I find a
place I like. And that's pretty much it when it comes to travel.

What would make travel better, I don't know. The availability and access to
good offers and good information over internet generally pretty much did it, I
think.

------
guelo
The airlines are not going to let anyone fix the big problems in ticket search
because they create those problems on purpose to get more revenue. Things like
knowing whether you should wait to buy the ticket at a lower price, comparing
total price including baggage and other fees, searching across all airlines
including those that are not listed with the main data providers. Until
someone figures these things out there's nothing to see in this space besides
the gimmicky features we see now.

------
peteforde
I think it's darkly amusing that someone from a pre-launch travel startup
(that could only generously be described as a "feature not a product") would
blog about how Hipmunk is all rounded corners and Ashton Kutcher. I have no
affiliation to any of these companies except that I'm a HN regular who used to
use Kayak and then immediately, intuitively saw that Hipmunk was a vastly more
useable experience. Do I think I'm absolutely right? No, because it's deeply
subjective. Vive la différence.

Generally I'm immediately wary of any negative post that starts off with a
disclaimer about how much respect the author has for the soon-to-be casualties
of their rant. You're all buds, but you have no idea why their business needs
to exist. Right.

People roll the bones on all sorts of dumb-sounding concepts, and yet we're
all still humbled every time there's a big win and we didn't built it. So
here's to hoping I'm wrong about nobody having a Mozio-shaped hole in their
lives, right? Respect!

~~~
dlitwak
Apparently Hipmunk is a soft spot here . . . it is definitely curious that no
one has vehemently defended any of the other startups. I wonder if it would
have elicited the same response if I had criticized Expedia or some company
that wasn't so dear to the YC community.

I'm also a bit surprised at all the presumably "startup" people who feel the
need to lecture me on being a young upstart who doesn't know what he's talking
about, with an unlaunched product, who supposedly knows better. Oh the irony
of a bunch of people who rock the boat for a living jumping down the throat of
a kid who has the audacity to criticize. It seems that criticism of the big
bad companies is ok, criticism of one of our own, not so much.

Again, the article is from my perspective, on why I don't use it. You can say
what you please about how intuitive it is and all the reasons why, but I don't
use it, and I was trying to give some insight as to why. And I don't
appreciate you making it seem like I don't respect Hipmunk, i made it
abundantly clear I thought they had a wonderful product, I merely described
why I didn't use it, and it seems like I'm not the only one who feels that
way.

I'll ignore the quip about my own project haha.

------
sudoscience
I hope this doesn't come across as too negative, but I think it is pretty
strange for a blog of a travel aggregator site to say other travel aggregator
sites are essentially worthless. Either it stinks of bias or the conclusion is
that Mozio is just as non-game-changing and unworthy as these other sites.

FWIW I agree with the trying-too-hard aspect of forcing the square peg of
social into a round hole sometimes, but the visualization of Hipmunk is better
than Kayak. (I don't use Hipmunk to purchase because I find flights to be
significantly cheaper direct from the airlines, however.) If you were used to
Hipmunk you would also be loathe to change to new technologies that were
marginally, but noticeably better. It is the nature of human "comfort cost"
and the reason why poorer, older products still retain customers, at least for
some period of time.

~~~
dlitwak
Please point out where in the post I said that these other travel aggregator
sites are "essentially worthless". I'd really like to know. If I recall I
merely pointed out that I don't see it as noticeably better than kayak. I'm
pretty sure this is a direct quote: "Hipmunk is a useful product . . . I want
to make that clear."

------
emeltzer
disclosure: i'm currently selling a printed map
(kickstarter.com/projects/1147214836/toc-guide-to-sf)

I think social data is much more useful as a filter for a curated list than it
is when used on the set of ALL establishments in a city.

If the list is prefiltered to only include establishments that are at least
excellent examples of whatever they are trying to be, social data is a useful
way to figure out what to show the user.

Seeing what places my friends have been going to is much much less useful to
me than a carefully assembled list of excellent places. For a great example of
this, see "Tokyo by Tokyo." _much_ better than any social algorithmic solution
can currently do.

~~~
pchristensen
Let me put in a plug for the toc-guide-to-sf. It's a really smart, useful
project.

Here's that link again: kickstarter.com/projects/1147214836/toc-guide-to-sf

------
tnuc
The Hipmunk write up is more or less what I think of it.

The data it presents is great. It looks great, nice bells and whistles.

But it doesn't really improve over kayak. In fact it is slower and in some
ways less useful. There is still a lot of room for improvement in the flight
booking space.

------
kapitalx
Ah, Google flight search though has shown me that you can innovate in flight
search. <http://google.com/flights> (don't forget to click on the little graph
icon next to the "return date"

------
adsyoung
My favourite travel startup is Adioso.com because they focus on simply finding
you the cheapest flight whether you are looking to go somewhere specific or
just anywhere international. Direct and to the point, no pointless social
features.

------
AznHisoka
Hipmunk can't survive with just tech startup buzz/YC kool-aid. They need to do
actual TV advertisements or aggressive Adwords. And forget about relying on
search engines because the other players got a 8-10 year head start in that
area...

~~~
dlitwak
I think they are cool enough that they will get enough funding to be able to
compete with the big players. But that is precisely my point, they aren't
different enough that they will attract organic traffic from people saying
'wow, my kayak experience was truly awful, let me try an alternative service'.
They are better, so perhaps a gradual migration will occur, but yes, I think
with the product they have not being different enough, they need to pursue
some aggressive advertising etc.

~~~
calbear81
I've been seeing some more Hipmunk ads on Google and they have some billboards
on the 101 freeway in the Bay Area. Unfortunately, air search is a low margin
business so it's hard to get aggressive on advertising and expect to break
even w/o the ability to upsell to packages like the online travel agencies do.

------
adamtmca
Am I missing some nuance in hipmunk's interface?

I've always thought hipmunk was basically indistinguishable from ITA Matrix
flight search (do a search and click "view time bars" to see what I mean) and
ITA has been around forever.

------
jasonjei
I didn't see anything disruptive about Hipmunk. ITA Software's Matrix UI and
iOS app are already excellent. Isn't Hipmunk already using ITA anyway for
data?

