Voyageur: An Experiential Travel Search Engine

TL;DR

Voyageur is a travel search engine that emphasizes experiential and subjective aspects of travel services, providing users with personalized insights and combining subjective preferences with objective data.

Contribution

It introduces an experiential search approach to travel, integrating subjective user preferences with objective attributes and offering additional insights about services.

Findings

Successfully integrates subjective and objective travel data.

Provides personalized tips and facts about travel options.

Enhances user decision-making with experiential search features.

Abstract

We describe Voyageur, which is an application of experiential search to the domain of travel. Unlike traditional search engines for online services, experiential search focuses on the experiential aspects of the service under consideration. In particular, Voyageur needs to handle queries for subjective aspects of the service (e.g., quiet hotel, friendly staff) and combine these with objective attributes, such as price and location. Voyageur also highlights interesting facts and tips about the services the user is considering to provide them with further insights into their choices.