Gadling

One of the most popular questions I usually see out on the travel forums comes from first-time travelers who are looking to leave town for a "once in a lifetime" trip with their significant other. The typical question sounds something like this:

"I WANT TO GET AWAY FOR A FEW DAYS FOR MY HONEYMOON. CAN YOU RECOMMEND A NICE PLACE TO STAY? IT HAS TO BE ALL INCLUSIVE AND VERY ROMANTIC. THANKS IN ADVANCE!"

This question, of course, leaves too many unanswered questions. When? What do you want to do? Where are you leaving from? Can you give us somewhere to start?

Luckily, I now have Orbitz's My Ideal Beach search engine to point them to. Powered by the web crawler's wealth of hotel and travel booking data, the easy-to-use website asks users a few simple questions about their travel preferences and desires, namely: Type of Traveler, Interests and Hotel Options. Given your choices, the engine will pick out a few favorite resorts for you and spit out a couple of optimal results.

What the engine won't do is sort by price or exclude travel options -- for example, I may not only prefer an Adult-only resort, I may require that no children be present at all on the premises.

But when I think about it, this search engine isn't really for nitpicking travelers who want to seek out the best deal at the best price. This is tool for softcore users who want a pretty interface and who want to be led to their favorite resort on a private beach behind 20 foot walls. For those travelers, this site is perfect.

Filed under: Hotels and Accommodations, Internet Tools, News