A month ago, we wrote an article in Travopia about the next generation reservation engines. Magically, the wish in the article has come true now. FACT-Finder, a Germany based company has developed a product named “FACT-Finder Travel” that performs semantic search. Travellers no more have to worry about filling lot many details, selecting options from dropdowns, selecting dates from date-picker, scrolling down/up. FACT-Finder Travel makes it easy for travellers – all they have to do is – type free worded text in a textfield and click on “Search”.

This is essentially the same manner in which people do “Google Search”. One textfield replaces “n” number of inputs fields there by making the trip planning / shopping stage very easy and quick.

There are lot of innovative features built into FACT-Finder Travel. For example, the product will detect spelling mistakes, local language nuances, slang and abbreviations, then determines the best possible word by running its powerful algorithm. So, a traveller searching for “Need a hotl in Miami beech for May 15″ will automatically be read by the product as “Need a hotel in Miami beach for May 15″. That’s cool.

FACT-Finder Travel does “semantic” search – meaning, it understands the context of the search text entered by the traveller. To put it simple – it is the text version of Siri (the iPhone fame). Because of this semantic search feature, travellers will be able to search for “Need hotel for 2 person  during Christmas”. The product understands the need of this traveller, knows which date Christmas falls on, and displays hotel search results for the Christmas days.

The product is already been used by two OTAs in Germany: http://www.weg.de/, http://urlaubswelt.neckermann.de/

We experienced the product for an hour, and we confidently say that FACT-Finder Travel is definitely the next generation search engine in trip shopping stage. Having said that, we cannot forget the big daddy of semantic search – Google! For Google, the semantic search algorithm is very well in place, it’s tried and tested. So, a strong platform already exist for Google. It is going to be a healthy competition. The entity that well understands the market will have an upper hand.

Next week, ” FACT-Finder Travel” will be featured under “Startup Spotlight” section. Watch out for more information on how their revolutionary technology works, when and how they conceived this idea and more juices!

Author: Karthick Prabu