90di (profiled earlier) has launched a natural language based travel search that accepts free text queries like “delhi to
bangalore on 15th september 2008 by train” or “bangalore to kolkata on 05/09/2008″.
This surely is an interesting twist to the general form based search (which they have too) and is far more intuitive than filling up the forms.
I like their SRP page a lot – very neat and useful information (esp. train info search results)
Do give 90di a spin and share your comments.
Ubona is coming out with a travel voice portal (land-line no:) which would simplify things to a great extend. You just need to say the from & to locations, the date of journey & preferred time of the day. They will run a query with these parameters & TELL you the cheapest options.
It would be good for people on the move without having access to internet. So many people call some one asking to see the flight availability & cheapest options nowadays. Ubona would a big relief! Kewl concept… Let’s see how well they will monetize this…
Very cool..but here is where i have a serious doubt – Is Ubona partnering with some provider (i.e. powering their voice search?) If not, why take this up? I mean, there is a marketing cost involved in launching all these services and instead if they just be a backend to all these companies, they can be far more useful.
What’s your take?
They have developed the technology in-house… Using their platform as a backend to power-up services is definitely a good option. Even we were thinking of taking something unique to the operators using their engine & i guess they would be pretty open to it.
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