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p/hipmunkTake the work out of planning your next trip.
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Ryan Gilbert

Hello Hipmunk - Your intelligent travel agent.

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Hello Hipmunk is an AI-powered travel assistant that helps you with trip ideas and planning whereever you are: over email, by understanding your calendar, and via bots that are deployed on Facebook Messenger, Slack, Skype, and Microsoft Teams.

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Alain Lagrecque
I wonder if this is AI, or half AI half human, like Facebook's M?
Ryan Hoover
Love Hipmunk. It's my go-to search engine for flights. It's unclear if they charge for this and how much. It seems like a time-saver for the frequent flyer.
Roxy Young
Maker
@rrhoover Hey Ryan, Nice to meet a fellow Hipmunk fan. (I loved Hipmunk so much, I decided to work there.) Confirming that Hello Hipmunk is 100% FREE. You can use both features - Hello Email and Hello Hipmunk - for any upcoming trips. For Hello Email, just start an email with hello@hipmunk.com in the To: or CC: line and The Hipmunk will respond instantly to the thread. For Hello Calendar, all you have to do is integrate your Google Calendar. Find out more about Hello Hipmunk at hipmunk.com/hello. Post back with additional questions.
David Iwanow
Ah i do think it's something well overdue i do think if they can get the Hello calendar feature right that's probably the best opportunity.. I would forecast the Hello email is probably going to be most used by travel agents and personal assistants looking to save time....
Derek Shanahan
Huh, wonder what's new about this - the calendar piece seems new but the email suggestions seem along the lines of the emails I already get from them.
Roxy Young
Maker
@dshan The email piece that is new is that you can include hello@hipmunk.com in the To: or CC: line of an email. So instead of explicitly selecting dates on a calendar or dropdown menu on the web or mobile app, you can "talk" directly to The Hipmunk. Try something like this: "I'd like to check on flights from San Francisco to Las Vegas from Dec 5 through Dec 8." It's great if you want to start a thread with friends or family about an upcoming trip, or if you are just trying to do a quick check for schedule/prices.
✎ Andrew Warner
@alexisohanian cool new product. What's your role at Hipmunk these days? Is the email a "do things that don't scale" experiment?
Richard Oakley
I really wanted the hello@ email feature to work, but it doesn't in practise. Firstly, it only returns results for a single leg of the travel. Secondly, it only uses price as a factor to return results. For example, I requested British Airways flights specifically, but it kept returning Emirates flights, which would make my flight more than twice as long, and include a stop.
Adam Goldstein
Maker
@richoakley Appreciate your detailed feedback! Regarding your first point, we do return roundtrip results, but only when customers provide precise dates. Date parsing is something that we are actively working to get better at, and in particular we are striving to do a better job with relative dates like "returning a few days later." Preferences (such as asking for a particular airline or hotel) is also something on our roadmap. We knew that we'd have some of these misses in the beta, but felt it was important to ship the beta to get feedback like this. Let me know if you have any other suggestions.