Hipmunk, the flight planning and booking tool, has added a new hotel search function that includes an interesting hotspot facility.
Hipmunk allows users to search for hotels by location and date. The results of each search are shown on a Google Map, with green markers showing the cheapest rates and red the most expensive. It is also possible to sort the results by price, reviews and distance.
Hipmunk also allows users to overlay a number of heatmaps over the results. The heatmaps help the user to see which areas of their destination have high and low concentrations of restaurants, museums, bars etc.
The heatmaps are a useful tool, especially for users booking hotels in unfamiliar locations. In many ways the function improves on Google Hotel Finder's tourist spotlight feature.
When you search for a hotel with Google Hotel Finder the map tourist spotlight highlights the most popular areas for visitors to stay.
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Thanks for the writeup! There's a typo, though :) we're hipmUnk.com not hipmonk.com (though we do redirect it). Think of us as "Chipmunk without the 'C'."
ReplyDeleteThanks - I've edited the post.
ReplyDeleteThe weird thing is I had to fight myself not to write 'chipmunk'. I'm not sure how I then ended up with hipmonk.
Nice blog
ReplyDelete