This is the kind of website that wows those of us on HN, because it is a very well executed site.
But it does not solve a need, from what I can tell, that Kayak or other meta-searches solve. And at first glance, it seems slower than Kayak and has fewer options.
Visually, I think some people would debate whether your layout is more useful than the clutter of Kayak/Priceline/etc. It certainly meets the guidelines of attractive typography and whitespace but it took me some time to interpret what's going on.
In one real sense, I think the width of your site is a real problem. There's a reason why content sites, like blogs, usually fix their content width to 600-700 pixels: because it's hard to go from left to right and back to left across a wide width. Your current layout forces this upon the user in a way that's not very easy to read. Most people might say that Kayak is ugly and cluttered but it is much much easier to figure at a glance. Sometimes, ugly/cluttered is better...kind of like the debate between HackerNews and DesignerNews.
I'm sounding too harsh here...but only to be helpful. This was a site I showed all my coworkers because I thought it was pretty cool. But "cool" or different isn't enough in the travel space, unfortunately.
> But it does not solve a need, from what I can tell, that Kayak or other meta-searches solve.
I'll give you my last flight search (and ticket purchase) as a direct counter-example.
I want to go to Europe for two to three months. I'll fly wherever is cheapest and I'm willing to go for any period between March and July.
This is theoretically one search on Adioso. It is impossible on Kayak or any other website I've seen to date. And when I say impossible, I don't mean impossible in a single search, I mean I would have to do several thousand searches to cover the full matrix of options which would actually be impossible.
Not to mention, the carriers listed by Kayak actually was quite limited (not sure about others).
Then flip between to the Map and lowest fare icons (top right of map). I find this much better at zeroing in on a good fare, with loose travel requirements.
Sure, I think the discovery flexibility is great. But are there enough people who think that way?
And how many compared to people who think:
- I have the week of April 25-30 off. I can visit my best friend in Phoenix
- What flights are available for Boise, ID on July 2, when my friend gets married?
- time to find a flight for that conference next week
- Time to book a flight to go home for Christmas
I'm guessing: very few. And so even if Adioso's flight finding ability was as good or better than Kayak, I still have the habit of checking Kayak whenever I need a flight. And that is very hard to overcome.
But let's say I overcome my reflexive Kayak visit for special summers when I can just explore...how many of those special summers does anyone have, and is it enough to give Adioso enough traction?
We're betting that there are - or that there would be if they were given the option.
Think about it this way: if you were to build the perfect online travel product from scratch today, would you say "it will be a better product if we only let people search narrow origin/destination/date options; it's fine for people who have flexibility to just spend hours submitting hundreds of different searches"?
We think we have sound basis for believing there's huge demand for a more flexible search product with a company culture that excites people, but it's pointless to debate it here; we're very happy to let the market decide.
The argument that Expedia/Priceline/Kayak etc have the market sewn up is one we've lived with daily for the 5+ years we've been in the space.
Once you examine it closely, it's surprising to find how small a share of the total travel market these companies have, and how little affection and loyalty they command from ordinary people, even within the US, but particularly outside of it.
Not true. Skyscanner as just one example lets you search to 'Everywhere' depart 'Any Day' and arrive 'Any Day' and have nearly all the airlines including low cost carriers including ones Adioso don't like 'Ryanair'
While Adioso looks good and started off with promise, it appears to have fallen into the trap trying to be and stay cool.
Adioso has a lack of useful data. So working on whatever dreamy idea of natural language processing and making life easier for people isn't going anywhere fast.
I like ugly websites, they are useful and have lots of data so I can make useful decisions.
Adioso is not ugly. It makes decisions for me and then I go to Kayak to check the options. I want everything in front of me at once and Adioso moves away from that.
I only hope that Tom Howard has the sense to check the criticisms rather than just voting them down and pretending they don't exist.
Maybe it's time Tom showed off some of the criticisms about Adioso on his posts instead if all the roses. If people aren't complaining about Adioso then people aren't using it.
I only hope that Tom Howard has the sense to check the criticisms rather than just voting them down and pretending they don't exist. Maybe it's time Tom showed off some of the criticisms about Adioso on his posts instead if all the roses. If people aren't complaining about Adioso then people aren't using it.
You kidding me? I put the major criticisms right in the post. And we welcome criticism - one of the major reasons we publish posts like this is to attract criticism to help guide us in what our priorities should be. And I've never downvoted a polite/civil critical comment fwiw.
The criticisms I see in the article are;
1. Something from Paul Graham - It is his job to criticise.
2. “But it’s so slow!”
Otherwise it is overwhelmingly about personal problems and how Adioso is everyone's darling.
I can easily get 20 people to say my site is great, but to get 20 people to tell me it's a load of shit... that's the hard part. I don't need people to tell me that it's good, I need people wanting more.
What are you improving? What are you working on?
Don't get me wrong;
The ongoing soap opera about Adioso is a wonderful read, I wish more people had the guts to spell out all the bullshit that is involved in trying to make money from travel.
How you intend to get traffic/make money from Adioso is far beyond my comprehension.
I get 5 results searching New York to Singapore, and only 3 fit on the page at a time. Looks nice, but fucking awful to use as a tool.
FWIW, I think it's great you shared your troubles, it's not a discussion that's easy to have in any context. I think you and your team have a good eye and mindset and I hope you find the solution/pivot to your current problems (or else I wouldn't waste time with writing out criticisms)
But it does not solve a need, from what I can tell, that Kayak or other meta-searches solve. And at first glance, it seems slower than Kayak and has fewer options.
Visually, I think some people would debate whether your layout is more useful than the clutter of Kayak/Priceline/etc. It certainly meets the guidelines of attractive typography and whitespace but it took me some time to interpret what's going on.
In one real sense, I think the width of your site is a real problem. There's a reason why content sites, like blogs, usually fix their content width to 600-700 pixels: because it's hard to go from left to right and back to left across a wide width. Your current layout forces this upon the user in a way that's not very easy to read. Most people might say that Kayak is ugly and cluttered but it is much much easier to figure at a glance. Sometimes, ugly/cluttered is better...kind of like the debate between HackerNews and DesignerNews.
I'm sounding too harsh here...but only to be helpful. This was a site I showed all my coworkers because I thought it was pretty cool. But "cool" or different isn't enough in the travel space, unfortunately.