Imagine your ideal vacation escape. For some this may entail hiking the Appalachian Trail in Asheville, for others standing atop Peak 9 in Breckenridge on a cold, sunny morning. Perhaps the perfect vacation for you is figuring out a way to see every sight in Disney’s Magic Kingdom, or making certain that you see nothing at all but the ocean and the sun. Those who find it easy to imagine the idyllic, but lack the desire to put their thoughts into words are now in luck. Hotels.com now provides a search process that appeals to the senses and allows vacationers to dream their way into vacationing with “The Visualiser“.

Through “The Visualiser,” travelers are led to what Hotels.com deems their ultimate vacation destination and hotel after self-selecting a series of photos, each depicting unique vacation activities and placed in separate categories.  For example The Visualiser asks the user to determine their desired style of restaurant, idea of a fun night, suitable room, nightlife, and with whom the traveler will be vacationing with- kids, friends, partner, etc.

The last step asks users to check their age bracket and select their destination city with cities represented from all of the world- Paris, London, Dublin, New York, or for the adventurous spirit, “Surprise me!”

Those who have used The Visualiser can quickly see that it is a faster alternative in hotel hunting than filling out vacation preferences manually or with drop bars. However I found the accuracy of finding your ideal hotel based solely on pictures is still a work in progress. With that said, it is a fun process and it adds an element of ‘discovery’ to what I have historically considered a canned process.

Given the unique advantages and availability of vacation rentals in many of the world’s most interesting travel destinations, the concept of The Visualizer would find a well-aligned audience with the vacation rental category. For instance, I would argue some of the examples provided in the introduction of this piece would be undeserved if the consumers were not able to discover available vacation rental accommodations in addition to the standard hotel options.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Community, New Service Radar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.