[Sigia-l] AJAX & Hotelrooms in Vancouver

[jacco at nieuwland.net]

While looking for affordable hotel rooms in Vancouver, and an affordable flight
there, someone pointed me to www.kayak.com.

For me it was the first time to see an AJAX interface applied in such a way. The
search isn't blazing fast, but if you see what sources they use, that's not too
surprising. And I really like the way you can play with the results.

Of course, the Google Maps mash-up for the hotel search is great (could have
been a bit more interactive, where the slider controls would directly reflect
the results in the map). But in all, this will definitely be my preferred
flight & hotel search engine from now.

As for the usability of the site (if we can still discuss that here :-), it
seems to be geared more to the tech-savvy internet user. People will slowly
have to get used to these interactive controls on pages, but I don't think that
we should therefore refuse to use them...

Personally I'd like to be able to enter a zipcode, and search for nearest hotels
aswell. But the map helps a lot in that sense.

Anyway, I thought I'd share this with you.

Jacco