Skyscanner has long since cemented its position as one of the world’s largest flight search engines, but wherever it is people are flying, they’ll more than likely require somewhere to sleep too.
The company has offered hotel search for a while already through its website, but today – almost one year after Skyscanner introduced its second standalone mobile app (for car hire) – the Edinburgh, UK-headquartered firm is now rolling out a brand new native mobile app for hotels.
By way of a quick recap, in September last year, Skyscanner took its hotel-search service in-house when it acquired Barcelona-based travel company Fogg And today’s launch is very much a by-product of that deal.
How it looks
Available for iOS only initially, Skyscanner Hotel Search is slickly designed. The homescreen features basic search parameters such as destination, dates and number of guests, then you’re good to go. You can elect to view your search results in a list format, or even plotted on a map, and you can ‘Heart’ (bookmark) your favorite hotels.
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Photos play a central role too, letting you swipe through the images without leaving the main results page. You can further filter your results by price using a little slider, or narrow things down by the number of stars it has. You can also jump directly to your recent searches or favorites.
Interestingly, the Skyscanner Hotel Search app also lets you compare multiple searches, with a little ‘+’ sign enabling you to launch up to four different tabs each with different search parameters.
It’s not just about hotels though, despite its name – the search results also include apartments and hostels to suit different budgets.
Optimized for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, Skyscanner Hotel Search is really nicely designed, though it is of course entering a busy space. But with its existing presence in the flight realm, notching up 25 million unique visitors each month on the Web and boasting 30 million downloads on mobile, Skyscanner should be able to push its presence in the hotel realm without too much difficulty.
You can download Skyscanner Hotel Search from the App Store now, and a version for Android will be arriving on the scene in September.
Related read – Skyscanner: Inside Scotland’s tech titan and one of the world’s largest flight search engines
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