Not sure, since this is driving prices down in a market already plagued by high booking fees from travel providers. In which way do you see people benefiting from that beyond saving a buck here and there?
Our algorithm is based on daily rates from different providers as Kayak or Trivago does. What we do on the top of it is to keep checking day by day looking for better rates and getting that for you.
It's beyond price comparison websites.
Our way we get the best deal is checking daily if the price of your hotel decreased and getting that for you. In this way you'll have the best rate available on the market from now to the day you check in.
If you book directly on the hotel today it doesn't mean than tomorrow the hotel won't drop the price, so there's no absolute truth in saying that the best deals are available just dealing with the hotel. Sometimes is true, that's why we're negotiating pilots with some hotel chains (i cannot tell more, sorry)
First of all thanks for the feedback, I always love when critics are useful.
I try to go point by point.
We took a conscious decision disabling the scrolling wheel as zoom in/out because otherwise it would have triggered too many "refine searches". In addition today the search is even slower due to the huge traffic we're getting and it's definitely something we should work on.
But I agree, the map is definitely something we should work on.
Regarding the landing page I think it's still a speed problem, but I'll take a closer look to this.
> We took a conscious decision disabling the scrolling wheel as zoom in/out because otherwise it would have triggered too many "refine searches".
Tip: Any operation that's reliant on mouse events should be throttled or debounced -- they are just too noisy. For mapping, I have done debounces as long as two seconds without the delay being obvious. I suspect due to the style of user interaction in combination with the loading animations from the map itself.
really appreciated - it's somewhat debounced already, but it seems to be not quite right... I'd be curious to hear about how you went about debouncing (what time delays on which specific actions, zoom, moving the map)
Option one: Use the built-in `idle` event on the top-level map object. This basically does all the debouncing for you, though I don't remember off the top of my head whether this event happens before or after the `tilesloaded` event. The distinction would only be important if you want to wait for the map to visually update before displaying the results.
Option two: I think for your use case just listening on the single `bounds_changed` event will do what you want. That should trigger for all types of map movement or zooming. For the callback, use a closure which clears and sets a timeout event with the desired debounce time; no need to overcomplicate it. Then it's just tuning the delay until it hits that sweet spot between firing too often and obvious visual delays.
I believe it's just a design/interaction solution becoming popular. Then of course when both the websites are dealing accommodation similarities become stronger, but think about it, we're talking about enhancing the really relevant information: Location, picture and price.
And that's the best design solution to do it.
Right now we're focusing more on users who already know their destination and not on users with an open destination like in your case.
But this sounds like a pretty awesome product.
I will try to give this advice in the gentlest way possible both because it isn't a big deal, and to avoid a thread-destroying argument: Might I suggest you adopt a different phrase (which I see you've used a few times just in this conversation) other than "thanks man"? I'm not offended by it, and most other people probably wouldn't be either, but it does strike me as making the unfortunate assumption that everyone on this forum is a man. (I know that many people who use the word "man" in this way don't really mean to be referring to literal males. I'm one of them, in fact. I have been known to call my wife 'man.' But the impression will remain, for some--especially among people who don't know you.)
I'm sure you don't mean to offend, and you're just trying to be friendly and appreciative--and I would not blame you for bristling a bit at an off-topic scolding by the PC police. But it would cost you nothing to just say "thanks," and it could save you some grief in the future.
Just a thought from a friend.
Edit - I should have said this first: the service seems really cool. I'll try it next time I travel.
