Hotel search is like a given feature for many when they visit an Online Travel Agency (OTA). People have come to trust the search results that are delivered out from the search feature. This is easier said than done due to a very complex and multi-dimensional search that has to be performed. if your search is handing you wrong results, you will not see the visitor coming back to your site. We have mastered the art of not only bringing to you the most accurate results from the search criteria, but also, getting that with speed. Some cool features that come along with the search results are
- Multiple views
To help with all the different user experiences, the data that is fetched using the Expedia Affiliate API, is available to view in a normal list view, Grid View, Tile view and the latest addition, the Map view. We have found that the map view is the most favourite as most OTA’s do not filter the hotels on a map based upon the filters chosen. So, if I am looking for hotels in West Palm Beach near the City Place, the map view can become very handy to show me exactly which hotels are near the City Place. Hovering the mouse over the pins you can see the details of the hotels.
Every view gives the traveler information on hotel, star rating, tripadvisor rating, proximity to airport and city centre, deals on the hotel and the average nightly price. The view information is enough for the traveler to take decision.
- Best Proximity Search
Visitors who are new to a place and need to find a hotel in proximity to a landmark or location, can easily do so. Selecting the landmark, the view will automatically sort itself in an ascending manner with the hotel closest to the location on the top and going further. This is a very critical feature as the system takes the geo location (latitude and longitude) of the landmark and triangulates the location of the hotels with the landmark to calculate the exact distance of the hotel from the location.
- Lazy loading
This is a more technical term and allows alleviated user experience. The screen is not held up until the full data set is served from the Expedia Affiliate Network servers. Usually the images take a second or two more to load, but the text is rendered in a split second. We have made use of the latest and best technology like AJAX and JSON to give the best customer experience to your travelers.
- Mobile Friendly
With most users now searching on the mobile devices and with google introducing the mobilegeddon, it is important to render the search result correctly on a mobile device without compromising any feature set described above.
- Speed of Results
The speed of a website is paramount in today’s age. When google is indexing the site and if it finds that the site is not rendering data quickly, I will penalize the site. To check the site’s grade we usually check the score given by website grader. Sites that are built using our framework usually get a grade of 92% and above, which is considered to be a good grade from the search engines perspective.
