Built a tool to help make it easier to find places to stay. Would love your feedback

Ritchi

Hi all,
Just sharing a side project I’ve been working on. I built a site called Twipzy.com to make it easier to find places to stay that match your actual needs. Whether it’s pet-friendly cottages, hotels with cots, or somewhere close to the beach or airport, it lets you filter for what matters to you first.

It came from my own frustration with the usual booking sites. I’d end up with 15 tabs open just trying to figure out which places had the basics I needed, like being family-friendly or not miles from the coast. So I built something that helps you start with what’s important, like travel time, interests, or who you’re going with and then shows places that fit.

It includes places to stay in Ireland, France, Spain, and Italy for now, and links directly to the property websites to book (which I personally prefer).

I’d really appreciate any feedback. Does it feel useful? Is anything unclear or missing?

Thanks for taking a look.

drunkmonkey

It's not giving me any results, is it meant to yet? Personally i'd like everthing on one page to make the selections of what you're looking for, I like the idea that it links directly to the property sites as that's what I usually do after going to booking.com etc, It saves me a fortune. To do that for every country seems very time consuming for maybe little or no reward from the accomodation providers themsleves, have you a way to track bookings so you can get a kick back? Could you manage the bookings yourself, maybe join with inteletravel or similar and put your own packages together for people to contact you.

Found the hover over button buttons a bit fiddly, would a simple tick box option work just as well. It feels a little like i'm doing a red poll survey having to move from one section to the other, I get where your going with that style but I reckon a simple one page would be better.

Ritchi

Really appreciate the feedback, thanks so much.

It should provide results yes, I have a few thousand places in there, I suspect you added too many filters and it returned nothing, but I can see why that wasn't clear. I've just added in a fallback now, so you should always see something! But there's definitely still bugs that I'm fixing along the way, as well as data that's not totally complete…

Yes, I think many people do that with the likes of booking.com, I actually do it with takeaways too, try and go direct when I can, maybe just me on that one. I'm trying to mimic all the things that I think some people do when booking holidays and put them in one place, book direct, but also looking up tripadvisor, google, instagram, flights etc etc. Not quite there yet, but that's the end goal.

I have thought about making money, yeah, I have some affiliate links in there, but honestly, I'm not too worried about that yet, it's mostly about making something useful for people, that they'd actually use.

Fair point on the form being too long, I'll have a look at ways to shorten it, as well as the usability, they're a little tougher to get right.

Again, appreciate you having a look.

Blisterman

Cool Tool. I don't know if it's even possible, but I'd love to be able to filter by hotel rooms or suites which have separate living rooms to the bedroom. As I've found no way of doing this on booking.com or hotels.com.

drunkmonkey

are you building it yourself, I’m making a tool for my own business at the moment, been on the long finger a good while, stumbled across this the other day and it’s been a game changer, gave about 6hrs at it yesterday and nearly have it fully completed…well worth a look…think you get 7 messages free, my first message was about 5 pages long and fair play it got the nuts and bolts down..

https://www.hostinger.com/horizons

Ritchi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123601628#Comment_123601628

Nice idea, I am building in something for family rooms, but hadn't considered that, I'll add it to the list and see if I can manage it

Ritchi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123601663#Comment_123601663

Yeah, I'm building it all myself. I'm using AI to help a lot, there's obviously been huge advancements in that space. I haven't seen that tool, but would be interested to hear how you get on with it.

drunkmonkey

it’s excellent, I’ve built a pretty complex web app, no way I could have done it myself. It’s only relevant to my business at the moment, gonna roll it out to the staff next week and see how it goes in the real world.
Wasted my first 7 mesagess on building a gameified doing the chores app for my kids that lets them earn pocket money, I’ll get back to that one later but had one of the kids try it yesterday and he loved it, saving for a new Mario game..

Ritchi

Quick update for anyone who had a look earlier – I’ve made a few improvements over the past few days. Making the flow a little easier to get through, as well as adding in the filter suggested, so you can now search for properties that have a separate living room! Although, I only 50 places match so far for that one, but I totally get the appeal and thought it was worth including and will happily add more like that. Thanks again @Blisterman for the suggestion. Will hopefully get more places into the DB and it'll be a fuller list to search on that filter.

Appreciate all the feedback so far, if you spot anything else or have ideas for improvements, keep them coming. I’m still working through a long list of things I'd like to add, but this has been super helpful already.

xalot

That's really cool, I'm not seeing any properties but I'd like to see breakfast / all inclusive as an option and waterslides/ kids club.

Ritchi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123637202#Comment_123637202

That's disappointing, it should always show something, even if not an exact match for what you're looking for. I'll see if I can see why you didn't see anything. Maybe just I don't have enough places in the database yet, not sure…

Good shout on those options, I'll get them added.