Show HN: Nowcation - find spontaneous travel deals

[dpcx]

It would be nice if the departure locations were alphabetical, or at least let me type in to search.

[ssharp]

Very nice idea. I love the idea of being able to find random, good value, vacation ideas.

It would be nice to be able to apply some filters, or to have your algorithm filter out some of the junk ideas. For example, I was given several options to fly somewhere for one day and then return the next day. Some of the itineraries actually had me landing in the late afternoon and having to come home early the following morning. This is not a trip most would be interested in seeing and it adds noise to the results page.

The list of cities also seems like it should be organized alphabetically or by state. I didn't understand at all how it's organized now.

[templaedhel]

This is awesome! I've been tossing this kind of idea around for awhile, because every once and awhile I find myself browsing hipmunk for "cheap flights today" to see if there's anything interesting, and a UI with the express purpose of selling short notice cheap flights has a lot of potential.

My thoughts:

- When I'm booking a vacation, especially on short notice I'm going to need lodging. A lot of the price is hidden in the lodging and so I can't be sure if these are good deals or not. Going forward, it might be possible to load lodging in (possibly bake the deals a few times a day to reduce server load) and display 1 singular price that includes everything.

- While you're at it, why not keep playing up this instant vacation thing, take it to the next level. I click the button, pay, and you dispatch a uber to my house to take me to the airport.

- Selling package deals allows you to skim a little off the top in the way of "booking fees", but more interesting is the possibly to use yield management to buy tickets when they are the cheapest, then resell as a "nowcation" later.

Hope you keep working on this.

[rjvir]

These are all awesome suggestions. If a service did this for me, I would love it forever. I will definitely look into the quickest ways to implement stuff like this.

[jaddison]

Not sure how you're doing your 'booking' to photo matching, but you've got a great pic of Toronto, Ontario matched with a booking to Ontario, California. I noticed this after switching to the Seattle section.

Nice simple presentation.

[stagas]

Just letting you know that avast pops a malicious url warning for trying to load http://www.ineedstorage.com/images/sd.jpg when you enter the site.

[mosselman]

Me too.

[Trufa]

Brilliant!

I was just asking about that! http://travel.stackexchange.com/q/11620/

I hope you have plans for implementing it in Europe sometime!

[usaphp]

Hmm...It did not work for me. It says flight from New York to Orlando is just $128 but when I clicked to buy it - it sent me to Kayak and it was $210.

Great idea tho...

[jmediast]

heh, the devs were telling me about an issue they solved with caching, sounds like a side-effect

[ap22213]

I love sites like this. But, it would also be extra great if the site's price included estimates for the cost of lodging (say, at a particular quality level).

[mhb]

Isn't it obvious that the departure locations need to be sorted? Or do people who want to go somewhere now not care from where they leave?

[lhnz]

Is there something like this for people living in London?

I would specifically like something with weekend deals if such a thing exists.

[ceeK]

Me too. This would definitely be of interest to me.

[krauses]

Great idea. I was looking for a solution like this last night as I was trying to plan a last second trip. I hope you can pull this off. I often get random urges to take a 1-3 day trip, but I want to be able to find a flight that leaves the day that the urge hits.

It would be awesome to see deals from Hotel Tonight inline with the flights.

[quiquebras]

I like it. Where are you getting the data from? Could it be expanded to include other cities outside the US?

[vineet]

Great idea, nicely executed.

It seems that the price estimates are only for the flight costs (and not for lodging costs) - I was confused about this a little.

I would love to see something similar for lodging costs as well.

[stavrianos]

Heads up- That faux styled dropdown is very difficult to use with a smartphone.

[nmcfarl]

Or the iPad. Took 5, increasingly slow and methodical tries to actually get what I was trying for.

[Arelius]

This is cool... What data sources do you use?

Something I've always wanted is to be able to say, I'm looking for a flight from x to y, email me if it ever gets X cheap.

[arthurquerou]

This is GENIOUS. Nothing more to say. Now buy some ads, contact big news websites and profit. Maybe take some vacations, I know a great website to find awesome deals ! ;)

[camdroid]

Well, think I'll be taking a vacation sometime soon!

[merlish]

This really is a cool idea. Who doesn't occasionally yearn to get away from it all?

I'm not in the US, though that's not your fault.

[jmediast]

Looks nice!

I'd like to see a feature where I give it a budget, maybe a temperature preference, and it books me a random trip.

[thedanyaal]

Pretty cool idea. I'd like to see the students expand on this by adding some filter features like location, date, etc.