We’ve been posting quite a bit lately about search tools that not only produce traditional results but add intelligence mined from the data or added to the data for more precise recall.

This post from last week lists several of them including mPire, Wize, and Summize.

FareCast, is a service we’ve been covering before it was officially launched and when it was a research project at the Univserity of Washington named Hamlet.

FareCast offers air fare price info plus intelligence including air fare prediction (is it a time to buy now or wait and buy later) historical pricing info, market share data, alerts, and more.

Here’s an example, a search for fares ticket between Boston/Logan and Seattle.

Now, FareCast is also offering in a limited beta with hotel price info for about 30 U.S. cities.
There are many limitations with this beta so make sure to review this list that points out the thirty city limit as of today and that many hotels are potentially missing. The hotel beta labels each hotel and the price quoted (using historical data) either:
+ Not a Deal
+ Average
+ Deal

The technology that FareCast is using (patent pending) is named RateKey.

Again, this is a beta release and date limitations are also an issue for now.

Here’s a sample search and results page looking for rooms for a brief trip to Seattle in December.

These numbers are based on historical pricing info for each hotel listed on a map.

What is a Rate Key?
From the site:

Our patent pending Rate Keyâ„¢ indicates whether or not today’s rate for a specific hotel is a deal. It compares the individual hotel’s current rate found to its past rates observed for:

1. The same travel dates
2. Other travel dates on the same days of the week

A Rate Key “Deal” indicates today’s rate is lower than past rates for that hotel.

FareCast Hotels uses Microsoft Virtual Earth maps.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 12:57 am and is filed under Databases, Directories, and Guides, Info Management and Retrieval, Information Science, Search News, Search Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.