iPad flight search

I’m a big fan of Hipmunk.com’s simplistic approach to travel search. Instead of focusing exclusively on the technology to power their search platform and considering the user experience second, Hipmunk aim to make search as user friendly as possible. Generally speaking, they succeed.

Hipmunk launched their iPhone app some time ago (around half a year back) and most recently brought out their iPad version around the end of June. It’s time for a belated review!

Arguably, Hipmunk’s main competition comes from entrenched rival, Kayak.com. Kayak have both iPhone and an iPad app, so we’ll have something to test against.

Right from the first screen on the iPad app, Hipmunk have continued their focus on simplicity.

Compared to Kayak’s multi-tiled interface, Hipmunk’s app is a breath of fresh air. In fact, the experience is very similar to what happens on the website.

Hipmunk vs Kayak

Flight information is displayed almost identically to the website, in a giant gant chart. All the same filters exist, defaulting to “Agony”. The main difference from the site can be found in the redirection process.

The option to email the booking and finish on a desktop computer was added for iPad users, as well as the standard redirection to airline websites.

The problem with Travel apps

Travel apps have a built-in drawback that is pretty much unavoidable – people aren’t always traveling. This means the app is only useful once or twice a year and will most likely get deleted at some point.

To combat this, apps like Kayak has tried adding extra features an attempt to make the app more useful:

Useful? Sure, but very overwhelming. Hipmunk have taken the opposite approach, again opting to stay true to their site and focusing on simple search.

Hipmunk have created apps for iOS that mimic their simple website experience, instead of trying to compete for consumer attention by adding more features. This works really well; the app does exactly what it needs to do without all the extras tacked on. The only complaint I have is the omission of Hipmunk’s hotel platform. I would have loved to see the heat map based search happing on the iPad, but maybe we will see it in a future update.

Share