Ponterous

Some history

Flight aggregator websites like Kayak revolutionised the process of finding flights by giving consumers:

• A single online destination for finding the cheapest flights.
• More control than ever before when searching for flights via smart, dynamic filters (e.g. ability to filter by trip duration and time of departure / arrival etc.).

This was a huge leap from the old process of individually reviewing flight details from multiple airlines. In this model, brands became less important, price became more important. New travel aggregator websites sprung up with similar services and existing sites copied.    

The next wave

Now the next wave of travel search engines are emerging. Adioso, an Australian startup with Y-Combinator funding recently caught my attention and has quickly become my "go to" website for finding cheap flights. Adioso is a “travel search engine for spontaneous and adventurous travellers.” Simply, it’s a free search engine you can use to find cheap flights using broad natural language search terms such as “San Francisco to Germany mid October under $700.” It's not perfect (it needs more participating airlines) but I love Adioso's refreshing approach and it's ability to guide my decision making process on selecting potential destinations.

Evolution from search engine to decision engine: it's all about personal context

In this next wave, online travel services like Adioso and HipMunk will move beyond simple search engines and become invaluable decision engines (to borrow a term from Bing). Price will remain important but the next wave of services will augment flight recommendations with individual context and open up new ways of discovering destinations. For example, consider a few travel aggregator enhancements which will help users find and choose potential travel destinations: 

• Travel search engines hooked up to the social graph (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) and location services (e.g. TripIt, Foursquare, Gowalla, Plancast and Facebook Places). Users will be able to see which friends have been to a destination when the search results are displayed. It also opens up new searches like: 
  • London to somewhere I've never been
  • London to somewhere I have friends
  • London to somewhere my friends haven't been
    
  • London to somewhere my friends are planning to go
  • London to somewhere my friends are attending an event
  • London to somewhere I've favourited photos on Flickr
• Smart dynamic categorisation of destinations and dates. For example, categorisation of cities based on things like geographical regions, weather, special interests, events and dates. Kayak Explore on iPad provides a glimpse of this future, but it can go further. This advanced categorisation opens up new searches like:
  • London to somewhere in the Balkans
  • London to somewhere in Dutch speaking Caribbean Islands
  • London to somewhere the average temperature is at least 20 degrees in November
    
  • London to hiking destinations in Europe
  • London to European cities having a fiesta in November
  • London to somewhere a band i (Facebook) Like is playing
  • London to European cities not in high season
  • London to European cities I could get by with an average of $50 a day
  • London to anywhere when Real Madrid is playing a Champions League game in 2011
• The ability to go beyond merely finding destinations and also find starting points for flights. I've met many independent cost conscious overland travellers who desperately want to search for a city which will give them the cheapest flight home. A classic search: 
  • Anywhere in Europe to Sydney 

Let me know if anyone is already providing similar services. I'd also love to hear what other new search possibilities you hope the next wave will bring. 

[Based on a comment I put on Travel Amplified]