Travel meta search engine Hipmunk is launching “Hipmunk Anywhere” today, a cross-platform search feature that makes travel search a little bit easier for those of us who regularly use multiple devices.
If you’re anything like me, chances are you often look for flights on mobile, but then move to the desktop to continue your search or actually book the ticket. According to comScore, about 60% of consumers now begin searches for something they want to purchase on one device and then finish it elsewhere. This number is probably pretty similar for travel search, too.
Typically, this means you have to repeat your searches on every platform. With Hipmunk Anywhere, however, you just sign in to the service when you begin your search — no matter whether you are on a phone, tablet or desktop — and the service will save your searches and make them easily available on every other platform. On the web, for example, those searches will appear in tabs right on Hipmunk’s homepage.
It’s a simple feature, but it’s right in line with Hipmunk’s mission to make travel search easier.
“We wanted to make it so ridiculously simple that users would wonder why nobody else has done this before,” Hipmunk co-founder Adam Goldstein told me in an email yesterday.
One added benefit of this new feature for Hipmunk, of course, is that it gives users an incentive to sign up for the service.
In addition to the cross-platform search, the company is also bringing the ability to book hotels directly through Hipmunk (instead of going through a third-party booking site) to its mobile website. Until now, this was only available on the desktop. As Goldstein tells me, this feature launched less than a year ago, but it already accounts for more than half of Hipmunk’s monthly hotel bookings.
Also new on mobile is multi-city flight search, which is now available in all of Hipmunk’s mobile apps.
